Survey: SMBs uncertain about the cloud

If the results of a recent survey commissioned by Verio are any indication, IT professionals at small and medium-sized businesses are not quite ready to put their faith in the cloud. The study showed that more than two-thirds of respondents are uncertain if they will purchase a cloud solution in the near future.

“SMB decision-makers wear many hats. One day they may be managing human resource matters and next they are making updates to their website,” said Mitch Merrifield, senior director of managed computing solutions for Verio. “Emerging technologies always seem to have some barrier to adoption, and for SMB decision makers who aren’t exclusively focused on IT, implementing a technology like cloud can be daunting.”

The results of the survey definitely show that hesitance: Just 20 percent of decision makers said they were likely or very likely to implement a cloud computing solution in the next twelve months, while almost 10 percent were likely or very likely to implement in the next three months. Still, 21 percent cited the ability to share resources and 20 percent cited on-demand resources as important.

“SMBs need to keep in mind that their concerns about cloud are similar to those general concerns with managing their overall online presence: Is my data secure? Is there a chance I will experience an outage? Am I operating as efficiently as I can?” Merrifield said. “All of these questions have clear answers, and they might be surprised by the response they receive. The industry as a whole simply needs to educate SMBs about the benefits, specific to them, for implementing a cloud solution.”

Merrifield believes education will change the mindset. “With increased knowledge, SMBs will better understand how to utilize cloud to their benefit,” he said. “Helping SMBs truly understand the best paths to success with cloud offerings, and other hosted IT solutions, will begin driving further adoption in this segment. We work closely with our channel partners in educating the market and helping them to better inform their small business customers on the hosted IT solutions—including cloud—available to them.”