Nearly 40 percent of global SMEs will pay for one or more Cloud Computing services within the next three years,. That's the prediction – or perhaps the hopeful expectation – of Microsoft in a new study of the market.
According to Microsoft's SMB Cloud Adoption Study 2011, which polled more than 3,000 SMBs with 250 or fewer employees in 16 countries, some 39 percent will leverage at least one Cloud service within three years.
That's encouragingly up 10 percent year on year on the numbers using a Cloud service last year, but it still means that less than half of all SMEs are seeing the potential benefits of running their business systems in the Cloud. With that in mind, on to Microsoft's predictions.
The 39 percent of SMBs expected to utilize cloud services is an increase over the 29 percent that currently use at least one cloud computing offering, Microsoft's research found. Additionally, Microsoft found that the number of cloud services that SMBs will pay for will nearly double in many countries over the next three years.
The firm estimates that 43 percent of workloads will become paid Cloud services. It reckons that SMEs that take the plunge will use an average of 3.3 Cloud services each, up from less than two services today. That number – and amount that will be paid for such services – rises according to the size of the company. So, Microsoft predicts 56 percent of companies with between 51 and 250 employees will pay for an average of 3.7 Cloud services within three years.
Marco Limena, Microsoft vice president in its Worldwide Communications Sector, said:
But at the end of the day, the report concludes that SMEs are most likely to have a hybrid IT environment, using the Cloud for email, collaboration, accounting and payroll.
With SAP pitching its Business ByDesign offering into the low end market and Microsoft beefing up its own SME push – not to mention the existing presence of firms such NetSuite ramping up their own drive into the market – the SME sector is going to get a lot of attention over the coming months and years.
