Small Office/Home Office - SOHO
Categories: Marketing
SOHO is an enormous industry to the enterprise hardware and software worlds. Companies like Intuit (Quickbooks) and Microsoft and Google and Amazon Web Services and literally thousands of smaller versions live (and die) trying aggressively to sell into this market.
Why the delineation? Well, if you're the U.S. Government, your needs are vastly different in computing services than if you're Bob's Jewelry Store chain, a group of 3 retail stores all based in the St. Louis Metro area. The margins and selling process are vastly different, as you'd imagine. The U.S. Government needs an army of its own lawyers and buyers (usually not the sharpest ginsus in the drawer) just to understand what a new human resource tracking or tax assaying or auditable billing system might mean. But for Bob, he can just get the power version of Quickbooks for $50 a month or so, and be done with it.
And there are hundreds of thousands of Bobs around the world. So Intuit can sell 10,000 Bobs and make $50 a month from them with no human beings involved in the sale on Intuit's end. Their software automates everything, so their costs for that incremental sale are almost nothing. And once Bob becomes loyal, well...Bob doesn't have his own IT guy, so he remains with Intuit "forever."
Highly lucrative market. Easy to move quickly (relative to dealing with national governments). And way sharper ginsus.
