SMB cloud adoption to double in three years

Friday, March 25, 2011

While cloud computing adoption among small- and medium-sized businesses is expected to increase in coming years, a recent study by Microsoft found the growth will be slow.

According to Microsoft's report, which surveyed 3,258 SMBs from 16 countries, 39 percent of companies plan to deploy cloud services within the next three years. Additionally, Microsoft found 29 percent of SMBs already use the cloud.

SMBs are most interested in SaaS, such as email and collaboration applications. However, the study also found businesses are interested in IaaS, as well as growth-oriented and unified communications services.

"Growth companies want a scalable environment that can meet their expanding needs, with an affordable, pay-as-you-go pricing model that eliminates the need for over-investment in IT," Microsoft said in a statement. "[SMBs] that want to maintain their size, but want to become more profitable, seek cost-effective, efficient solutions that match their needs for predictability and low overhead cost."

Microsoft's study represents a significant increase from an earlier report by Spiceworks. According to that study, only 14 percent of SMBs had deployed cloud services as of July 2010.