“I believe at the smaller end of the business market, it introduces a level of familiarity and comfort. As you start to move to the larger end of the business market these IT decisions are much more scrutinized around user management, upgrades, security and more,” she said. “Interestingly enough, Compass Intelligence finds that across various sizes of business, there remains a concern around security and trust with cloud services.”
Personally, Atkinson said she stores music and other personal data in the cloud using Carbonite, iCloud, and a few other personal cloud services.
The three most compelling themes around cloud, according to Atkinson, are: ease of doing business; cost savings or cost shifting; and accessibility. Cloud services are also improving communications, which is another popular area of adoption among SMBs.
“My company for one has moved multiple services to the cloud, including our server services. The look and feel of everything stays the same, but for our company we have room to grow our communications services over our server to better enable our employees,” she said. “In many cases, if we would have stuck with the hosted solution, we would not have the flexibility and cost savings to expand our capabilities internally and with our customers.”
Cloud business for SMBs means they can be nimble, strong and look just as “corporate” as larger enterprises, Atkinson added.
“It will expand the capabilities and give you access to services that were before out of reach because of cost and access,” she said.
SMBs for the most part are using public cloud models in their implementations, with many mid-sized organization using hybrid clouds.
“I believe we will always have various models in the cloud. Mid-sized businesses may be more apt to utilize hybrid solutions as they may require more internal control and command,” Atkinson explained. “There may be specific cloud segments or categories within the market that might move solely to the cloud. We will all have to watch the adoption models take place across the business market to see how this plays out.”
Compliance is a major area businesses are challenged with when it comes to adopting cloud. Atkinson said new rules will have to be put in place to protect the company, which include security, password, storage and access rules.
“IT managers and owners will have to think differently about their business when using cloud services,” she said.
Analysts from Compass Intelligence and Techaisle will present their independent research findings regarding adoption, challenges, and other market trends related to cloud computing for the SMB market at the upcoming Cloud4SMB conference in Austin, Texas. The session, “State of Cloud Computing – The SMB Perspective,” will be held on Oct. 2 from 12:30-1:15 p.m. at the Austin Convention Center.
“I hope to bring some perspectives from the actual SMB sector, as this is an area within our firm that we track very closely,” Atkinson said. “The end-user and decision-maker perspectives can add clarity since much of what you will be hearing will be coming from the vendor community.”
Want to learn more about cloud computing solutions geared specifically towards small to medium-sized businesses? Don’t miss the Cloud4SMB Expo, collocated with ITEXPO West 2012 taking place Oct 2-5, in Austin, TX. Stay in touch with everything happening at Cloud4SMB Expo. Follow us on Twitter.
Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli
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