14 DAY TRIAL // I already opined that the Cloud is inevitable, and it appears that more and more small and midsize businesses will embrace IT as a service in the coming years, according to Microsoft’s “SMB Cloud Adoption Study 2011.” No less than 39% of SMBs will have adopted Cloud services ahead of 2014, the Redmond company revealed, noting that 29% already are today.
But not only will the number of SMBs embracing the Cloud grow by 34% over the course of the next three years, the number of services leveraged will also increase, even as much as doubling in some markets.
Still, while business customers are still far from driving an explosion of Cloud uptake, concerns impacting adoption of this new computing paradigm are slowly eroding, and the fact that on-premise hardware becomes obsolete also helps.
“Cloud adoption will be gradual, and SMBs will continue to operate in a hybrid model with an increasing blend between off-premises and traditional on-premises infrastructure, for the foreseeable future,” revealed Marco Limena, vice president, Business Channels, Worldwide Communications Sector at Microsoft.
“As cloud computing becomes more ubiquitous and SMBs’ existing IT becomes outdated, adoption will grow rapidly. Hosting service providers should consider the appropriate sales, delivery and support models to target larger SMB customers that are more likely to pay for cloud services.”
Whenever I talked with Microsoft representatives pushing the company’s Cloud offerings, they emphasized the flexibility that customers can enjoy.
The software giant doesn’t lock them into a single model, but instead enables business customers to transition to the Cloud at their own pace, supporting the various stages of a migration, instead of forcing a sudden leap.
The SMB Cloud Adoption Study 2011 reveals that in three years’ time, 28% of workloads will still be anchored on-premise, while another 29% will be represented by service bundles and free offerings, with as much as 43% reserved for paid cloud services.
The company already has available a complex set of Cloud offerings, including software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), allowing for hybrid Cloud and on-premise scenarios.
“Some key findings include the following:
•Those SMBs paying for cloud services will be using 3.3 services, up from fewer than two services today.
•Past experience with support from a service provider is a key driver of service provider selection among SMBs. Eighty-two percent of SMBs say buying cloud services from a provider with local presence is critical or important.
•The larger the business, the more likely it is to pay for cloud services. For example, 56 percent of companies with 51–250 employees will pay for an average of 3.7 services within three years,” the software giant said.