Some interesting points from ‘Cloud Adoption: The Difference Between Small & Large Companies‘ on Sandhill.com…

Another interesting pattern emerges when you look at the really small companies with less than 100 employees. A recent survey by Spiceworks Inc. resulted in 1,500 global responses from their Voice of IT Market Research Program. In this survey, nearly half of the responses (47 percent) are from businesses with fewer than 20 employees, while 24 percent are from businesses with 100 or more employees. The data shows that 14 percent of SMBs are currently using cloud solutions and another 10 percent plan to deploy cloud services over the next six months. The smallest SMBs (companies with less than 20 employees), high-tech companies, and companies in emerging economies are on the leading edge of the adoption curve. Though the user base is smaller today, the adoption rate appears to be growing.

Our research found that SMEs are twice as likely to move their core business-critical services to the cloud as large enterprises (25 percent versus 12 percent)

Cloud adoption is catching up with the hype. For example, some SMBs have up to 80 percent of their services in the cloud.

No doubt that almost everybody will be using cloud services in the near future. Though, the adoption by small businesses is going to lead the way.

Our founder, Sahil Parikh, pens down his thoughts on starting businesses and cloud computing tools at PrudentCloud.

Startups are a rage in emerging economies. Look at India, China or Brazil, you will find hundreds of startups sprouting all across the country. It just has become so easy to start and market a web business (even in developing countries) – increased broadband penetration, inexpensive computers, smart-phones, easy access to the Internet, free-for-all social networking tools and above all, the availability of software tools that were either out of the reach of a small business or expensive and cumbersome to setup.

Startups today have no IT infrastructure of their own. They are lean, agile, and small. They work virtually using applications that are hosted in the Cloud. According to Wikipedia, a typical Cloud Computing provider deliver common business applications online which are accessed from another web service or software like a web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers.

You can crank up your startup idea over a weekend and automate every essential function of the business by using services in the Cloud. Here is a blueprint on how to achieve utopia:

Read the entire article here…