Will 2011 be the Year of the Cloud for SMBs?

The last few years has seen quite a few changes and challenges for small and medium businesses, not the least of which is the growing move to the cloud. Various organizations and business leaders have been predicting the “year of the cloud” for several years now, and it begins to look like 2011 may finally be it. The debate whether the cloud is simply a fad or if it is a new trend that is here to stay seems to have finally been answered as a critical mass of business has finally made the move to the cloud. Recently IDC reported worldwide revenues for public cloud servers will reach $3.6 billion by 2015 and it expects servers for private cloud service to reach $5.8 billion. This sudden shift represents the move by IT managers to simplify their current IT infrastructure, increase efficiencies and lower costs. “These evolutionary, and revolutionary, changes in IT deployment and business attitudes are having a profound impact on traditional IT environments,” said Katie Broderick, senior research analyst, Enterprise Platforms and Datacenter Trends and Strategies, IDC. Broderick went on to point out how allocating the more mundane tasks to the cloud have freed the manpower in many businesses to concentrate on tasks that add value to their business. She added that this movement is “critical to driving cloud adoption” and noted that SMBs are looking to be one of the largest groups that will be reaping the benefits of the cloud. Many analysts are now predicting the adaption of SaaS and IaaS will double in the next few years, with SMBs leading the drive as mobile devices become a larger tool in the workforce. The proliferation of various mobile devices has lead many businesses to the cloud according to a new market study by New York based Access Market International (AMI) Partners. The study, entitled 2010-2011 State of SMBCloud Services Market pointed to the expansion of mobile devices into the marketplace as a key player in cloud growth. “Users now want to take the things they can do in their private lives into their professional working practices,’ said Hugh Gibbs, vice president of research at AMI. He pointed to the ability to access email, simple internet apps and social networking sites, or checking availability of colleagues wherever and whenever they need to as one of the big changes that is driving more and more SMBs to the cloud. Our newsletters and blogs are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. We invite you to engage in our online community by following us on Twitter @GMOCloud and 'Liking' us on Facebook.