Only 30% of Small Businesses Utilize Cloud
A recent survey sponsored by Microsoft queried 500 small businesses about their involvement with the cloud. Surprisingly enough, 70% of respondents mentioned that they did not use cloud based solutions in their environments. Conversely, 86% of those same respondents indicated that technology was crucial in achieving long term success within their organizations.
The survey was commissioned by Microsoft so that they could use those numbers for the National Small Business Week Event which is commenced by the Small Business Administration. This survey is a clear indicator that there is still a large untapped market out there for those that offer cloud services to small businesses. While some small businesses are cloud centric, the research shows that most are not.
This presents a huge opportunity for the average cloud entrepreneur. You must learn how to tap into these small businesses and provide them with a service that more efficiently achieves their organization’s goals. Microsoft realizes this is a big business play for them as well. On the Office.com blog, Kirk Gregersen wrote, “The power of cloud solutions like Office 365 provide small businesses with the same computing power as much larger companies, while addressing key concerns about upgrades, security and mobility, as noted above. Office 365 can alleviate these concerns with automatic upgrades, built in enterprise grade security and access to mission-critical content from any location and any device – greatly easing the burden of IT management on small business owners.”
While there is still a tremendous opportunity that involves helping small businesses take their enterprise onto the cloud, other findings from the survey bring to light some key statistics that every cloud organization should take note of. Nine out of ten respondents said that they were familiar with cloud offerings. Nearly two thirds of respondents indicated that they were the chief IT decision maker in their organization. Six of ten respondents said that increases in technology result in increases in revenue for their organization. What were the major barriers to entry? Security, costs and accessibility concerns were listed as the top barriers to entry.
