This week cloud business news edition focuses on cloud computing for small business. Most agree that small businesses are fertile grounds for business cloud solutions – partly due to the reason that they are more nimble and leaner than the larger counterparts; changes are small business’ friends.
Despite the lack of cloud computing knowledge, small businesses are betting their future in the cloud, moving part or all of their business operations to the cloud.
And the cloud computing trends in small business is global trends.
The future is great for small business cloud computing – worldwide
In Asia, cloud computing in in-trend among small businesses. The Business Times’ E-Roundtable this month focuses on how the cloud is the game-changer for small and medium businesses (SMBs.) SMBs in Asia region are becoming more cloud-savvy and demand better cloud solutions that can enhance their competitiveness in the Asia market. Cloud solution providers capitalize the demands by crafting cloud solutions that enable SMBs to compete with the larger companies.
In Western Europe, SMBs can’t resist the cloud, as they are eager to spend on cloud solutions for small business. Users now want to take what they can do in their personal life to the business life with the ever-availability of mobile technologies. As the cloud technologies are affordable – thanks to the pay-as-you-go subscription model – more SMBs are investing more in the cloud, and the cloud adoption will double by 2015. Indeed, the future is great for cloud computing (and the cloud businesses.)
Some questions yet to answer…
Small businesses need to figure it out whether they want the cloud as the focus of their main business operation or just a supporting system. Some want the cloud to play important roles in disaster recovery, as well as important data storage, while some others just want to run the business in the cloud.
Regardless of small business owners’ decision on what to do with the cloud, they need to understand that cloud security will always be an issue. Many questions, such as “Is my data well-secured in the cloud?“, need to be addressed before deciding on which cloud solution providers to partner with.
One thing for sure, cloud computing is not a one-size-fits-all solution for business productivity and business operational cost-cutting endeavors. Business owners need to discover what will work for their business – or else, cloud computing is just becoming a new way for them to create more overheads in their business expenses column.
