Techaisle recently announced the results of its 2015 US SMB Cloud Computing Adoption Trends study, which showed a current rate of 89%, with a projected Cloud Adoption rate of 96% by the end of 2015. The key finding of this study is that cloud has shifted greatly from a “future technology” to a part of mainstream IT. The Techaisle team offered a few suggestions for SMBs and IT Pros in their report blog this week.
(Pictured: Harrybbb and Anurag Agrawal at the 2015 IBM PartnerWorld Leadership Conference)
To start, although many organizations have been taking a shot at “The Year of the Cloud,” going as far back as 2010, 2015 appears to be the main connecting point between cloud and mainstream IT, and in turn, can be the end of the “Year of the Cloud” discussion. Let’s take a look at the report results for both SMBs and IT Pros/Cloud Vendors.
On the SMB side, cloud has four main takeaways from the Techaisle report:
- Cloud is an essential part of IT Infrastructure: This is because Cloud technology is able to solve key SMB isssues. The report showed that US SMBs are not only using cloud today, but they are also planning to expand their cloud infrastructure in the coming year.
- Cloud is an essential part of Business Infrastructure: With the ability to add services without adding extra staff, Cloud is becoming more and more a success factor for SMBs, according to the Techaisle study.
- Cloud is trending towards deeper use of Software-as-a-Service: This type of service can increase the automation efficiency of SMBs, and thus is a growing trend among those polled.
- Cloud purchase sources are becoming a mix of existing relationships and new vendors: The Techaisle report showed that many SMBs first go to the large Cloud vendors, but ultimately, they end up using a variety of sources for information, consulting and implementation of Cloud technologies.
Who were these respondents? Techaisle spoke to CEOs and IT decision makers of organizations with a varied number of employees. Each person had a 20-minute interview with a Techaisle team member to discuss their organization’s current and future Cloud plans.
So what does this shift mean for the IT Pro? Techaisle said that the challenge for IT Pros will be to become more sophisticated to meet the growing and changing needs of the SMB. In addition, Cloud providers will need to slightly change their message to include mass market, as opposed to just early cloud adopters.
