National Small Business Week to Focus on the Benefits of Technology, Entrepreneurship

country. In conjunction with the SBA, Microsoft is hosting its Small Business Week activities on June 17 at its Redmond Campus.Every year since 1963, the President of the United States has issued a proclamation announcing National Small Business Week, which recognizes the critical contributions of America’s entrepreneurs and small business owners. You might not have known that more than half of Americans either own or work for a small business, and they create about two out of every three new jobs in the U.S. each year.

According to a blog post by Stephen Bury, Microsoft’s Senior Product Manager, a report from Babson College recently cited a record high number of U.S.-based startups last year. “According to the report, 13 percent of the U.S. adult population is currently engaged in entrepreneurship; a significant jump that Forbes highlighted as a positive pulse point for the American economy,” Bury states in the blog.

With small businesses clearly having an increased effect on the economy worldwide, it’s a confidence boost to see optimism among U.S.-based entrepreneurs. “At Microsoft we do a tremendous amount of work with small businesses around the world, and we believe access to modern technology can play a key role in the successful launch and success of a new business,” Bury says.

It’s even more important that Cloud-based services are now giving small businesses the same type of access that have traditionally been offered to large enterprises. “Technology has literally changed the face of small businesses, allowing commerce and personal connections to flourish from a basement in Birmingham to a boardroom in Beijing - scaling business success like never before,” Bury says.

Of course, as with anything else in business (whether small or large), there is the bottom line. Funding to get a small business up and running is not easy to come by. In fact, Bury says in his blog that the Babson study shows that 82% of entrepreneurs rely on personal savings and contributions from family and friends to fund their new business. “They need cost effective technology resources that deliver the same power as enterprise businesses get without the overhead of an IT department,” he says.