IBM, Google court smaller businesses with tech offerings

— -- A couple of tech giants you wouldn't expect are heavily wooing small businesses.

They aim to tap the massive pool of small firms shopping for technology as the economy recovers. Global SMB tech spending is expected to rise an average of 6.7% year-to-year — to $674 billion by 2013, says market tracker IDC. "SMBs are the engine driving job and business growth," says Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

The tech giants are jockeying about whether smaller companies will opt for messaging, accounting and other programs running on a computer server maintained on site, or will prefer tapping in over the Internet, via hosted subscription services.

Intuit, NetSuite and Salesforce.com have thrived supplying hosted services to small firms. "Hosting is a way to hand off functions that are not core," says Rob Helm, analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft. The smaller the business, the more it can save, he says.

"If SMBs are going to lead the economic turnaround, they'll need cheaper technology," says Bob Picciano, general manager of IBM Lotus Software.

Microsoft hasn't stood pat. It has added collaboration tools to its ubiquitous Office suite of programs — tools that can run on a company-owned Windows server or be delivered via online subscription. "Choice is a part of our approach," says Eduardo Rosini, a Microsoft corporate vice president.