BEIJING, March. 9-- Microsoft Corp and SAP AG will be among companies targeting orders from smaller businesses at this year's Cebit technology fair in Germany as more exhibitors attend the show and resume spending on software and services.

The world's largest technology fair, which opens to visitors March 10, will grow for the first time in four years, organizers said. About 6,270 exhibitors will attend from 69 countries, with more than half of the companies coming from abroad. The show will have more exhibitors from China than the United States for the first time in the event's 19-year history.

The global information technology market may expand by 4.3 per cent this year as companies upgrade their computer systems and consumers buy more digital cameras, flat-panel televisions and mobile phones, Germany's Bitkom industry group forecast this month. Smaller companies are also demanding more software that lets them integrate different systems, Microsoft said.

"The event focuses increasingly on smaller companies, and it's the ideal forum for us to reach those clients," said Werner Leibrandt, who heads the German unit for small and medium-sized customers at Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft. Small companies, which are defined by the world's largest software maker as customers with 25 to 500 work stations,"are what drive growth in Germany, and that's good news for us."

SAP Chief Executive Officer Henning Kagermann will open the event together with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on March 9. Walldorf, Germany-based SAP, the world's largest maker of business-management software, in January said it will step up investment in new products this year and hire about 3,000 new people to help win more mid-sized customers.

Small and medium-sized companies are the main and biggest target group at Cebit, according to the organizers of the event, and Microsoft, SAP and other companies including Vodafone Group Plc will play host to roundtable discussions and hold presentations for smaller business clients.

The market for small and mid-sized companies is estimated at US$400 billion worldwide and comprises more than 15 million potential clients, SAP said in January, citing figures by researcher Gartner Inc. To win more such clients, SAP has added more functions to its Business One software.

In Germany, so-called mid-sized companies, also called the German Mittelstand, account for more than 90 per cent of all businesses in the country, according to Germany's Economics Ministry. Germany accounted for almost a quarter of SAP's total software sales last year.

SAP last July for the first time detailed the size of its customers, saying 28 per cent of the total were small to mid-sized companies with fewer than 2,500 employees or less than US$1 billion in revenue. By the end of the year, that part of its business had grown to 31 per cent of the total.

Microsoft's Leibrandt said his company generates about 50 per cent of its business in Germany from small to mid-sized companies. Microsoft will be showing what it calls a virtual company at Cebit where visitors to the stand can test different applications that are used to run businesses, he said.

Ernie Gunst, SAP's head of sales for most of Europe, will be among speakers at a Cebit-related event, as companies send more mid-level management to Cebit. Last year, speakers at the same conference included Patricia Russo, the CEO of Lucent Technologies Inc and Siebel Systems Inc CEO Tom Siebel.

Other top level executives that showed up in 2004 no longer hold their posts. Former PeopleSoft Inc CEO Craig Conway, who came to Cebit last year while trying to fend off a hostile bid from Oracle Corp, was fired in October.

(Source: Benedikt Kammel/China Daily)