Small businesses taking advantage of cloud services

Friday, December 30, 2011 4:54:33 PM

Companies of all sizes can significantly benefit from adopting the cloud's numerous services, but small business may have the most to gain.

According to a recent Fox Business report, cloud computing is among the top technology trends small business will take advantage of next year, as they generally contain less resources and could greatly benefit from the cloud's cost-cutting tendencies.

Rob Enderle, a founder of technology consulting company The Enderle Group, told the source that 2012 "will probably be the year you stopped looking at buying you own equipment and started looking at a service provider to provide it to you. There will be a lot more cloud services being offered."

The report said small businesses should consider implementing a cloud strategy that includes remote applications for enterprise software, such as customer relationship management and database programs. The source also named the consumerization of IT and increased mobile security concerns as other future small business trends.

All three trends could potentially be tied together, as some experts believe cloud computing is transitioning to a more consumer-based model and mobile cloud computing is growing. A recent Visiongain report found that mobile cloud service revenues will expand 55 percent from 2011 to 2016.

-McAfee Cloud Security