Thursday, January 13, 2011

Cloud Adoption Triggering Fundamental Changes in Mid-Market and SMB

The results of a December survey of 1,000 North American mid-market and small businesses examines their adoption of cloud-based information technologies. The research was performed by MarketBridge, a provider of technology-enabled Marketing & Sales Managed Services and Solutions. Among the initial findings are:

-- Migration to the "Cloud" is Accelerating: 44% of companies claim to have at least one business application on the cloud and over 70% indicate they will move more within the next 12 months

-- Mobility Drives Cloud Migration: 38% of respondents indicated that the need to support greater workforce mobility is a trigger for cloud adoption

-- Early Adopters are Growth Companies: Companies growing >10% per year were nearly twice as likely to move software and infrastructure to the cloud

-- Marketing, Sales Most Accepted Cloud Applications: While 36% of companies using marketing automation do so via the cloud, and 29% of CRM is cloud-deployed, >49% of companies are planning to move one or more of these applications to the cloud within 12 months

-- Private Cloud Networks Preferred: 52% of respondents preferred to deploy on some sort of "private cloud" as oppose to multi-tenant public clouds

-- Better Security Becoming a Cloud Asset: 48% of respondents believed that data security would actually be better on the cloud, recognizing the investment and expertise needed to establish and maintain secure computing environments

-- 3rd Party Channels Remain Critical: 67% of respondents preferred to purchase software applications through a 3rd party value-added managed service provider; this appears to be due to a need for both higher service levels and functional expertise 

More information on Cloud Computing can be found at www.CRMindustry.com.

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