Business leaders, especially SMB owners, should know what the cloud is and how it operates. That’s because small and mid-sized organizations are flocking to business VoIP and hosted solutions—both driven by the growth of cloud computing—to help meet their needs. In fact, six million SMBs purchased their first cloud service last year alone, helping boost cloud services to a $45 million global market according to research from Parallels.

But not every SMB is on board with the cloud. The majority of IT execs still don’t have a formal cloud computing strategy in place or know which first steps to take, according to the results of a survey conducted by 451 Research (News - Alert), Uptime Institute and Yankee Group. You can rest assured that your SMB won’t misfire, though, as the findings thankfully share a few cloud computing best practices specifically for smaller players in the space.