The most recent global SMB Cloud Services Practice from Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. indicates that there are about 12 percent of small businesses and 24 percent of medium businesses that are already making use of software as a service (SaaS (News - Alert)).
Examining the SaaS users of today, 78 percent of small businesses and 31 percent of medium businesses are making use of a SaaS plus on-premise mix or hybrid model, while just about a third of SaaS users are utilizing an actual pure-SaaS product.
It is not unexpected to see more than half of U.S. SMBs considering SaaS as a possible solution with a likely growth of up to $95 billion in worldwide SMB cloud-related spending by the year 2014. AMI, who specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence, trusts that SMBs are easing into the idea of local plus cloud-based computing rather than jumping into a pure-play platform.
Yedda Chew, a senior associate at AMI, said that the consideration of SaaS amongst SMBs as the next favorable cost-saving model is expedited by the macro situation today although cloud computing is seen as the next IT platform.
77 percent of U.S. small businesses and 84 percent of U.S. medium businesses are still very concerned with the market conditions today even after nearly two years since the recession started. This correspondingly represents 31 percent and 81 percent year-over-year increase.
Chew also added that SMBs have their doubts, especially around the security of a 3rd party hosting confidential numbers. Companies such as Microsoft (News - Alert) and IBM are clearing these concerns for interested SMBs trying to make the most of the combination of cloud and on-premise issues.
Applications such as email/messaging, online storage and backup (archiving), and document management and collaboration solutions are believed by AMI to increase the need for on demand/cloud among SMBs from SaaS plus on-premise vendors.
Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anuradha’s article, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Juliana Kenny