Roundup Of Small & Medium Business Cloud Computing Forecasts And Market Estimates, 2013

Source: Forbes

What sets apart the fastest-growing small businesses is their an innate strength at turning data and information into results.

It’s becoming easy to spot a smaller business who is going to break out and grow quickly.  They often have these qualities:  they highly value knowledge, expertise and speed over seniority or cronyism; they have successfully managed a geographically distributed supply chain, production and service operations early in their history; and long before they reach $20M in sales they have learned how to balance domestic and international customer demands.  In short, they learned fast how to compete and win business globally.

Over the last several months research firms and enterprise software vendors have released studies on cloud computing adoption in small & medium businesses (SMBs).

The following are the key take-aways from these studies:

• Forrester forecasts that channel partners will increase their reliance on cloud software and services from 22% to 27% from 2013 to 2014.  The majority of this growth will be in SMBs. For additional details please see the free reprint of the report, Cloud Channel Trends, 2013 To 2014 by Tim Harmon and Jonathan Silber, February 28, 2013.  You can download the reprint here (no opt in required): http://www.forrester.com/pimages/rws/reprints/document/90001/oid/1-LMIK8X

• 61% of SMBs who responded to a recent survey are using cloud-based solutions today, with an additional 5% planning to add cloud services in the next six months.  69% of SMBs with fewer than 20 employees and 55% of SMBs with 250 to 999 employees are using cloud-based applications today. North American SMBs are more likely to use cloud-based applications co these services than EMEA (64% compared to 56%). Source: State of SMB IT 1H 2013 Semi-Annual Report On Small And Midsize Business Technology Plans & Purchase Intent (Opt-in required): http://www.spiceworks.com/marketing/state-of-smb-it/

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