Xhead = SME cloud spend to hit £6.7bn
Worldwide investment by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is set to reach around £6.7 billion this year, according to research by business and technology analysts TechAisle, reports Cloud Pro.
The spending prediction represents an expected compound annual growth rate of 12% over the next four years. TechAisle believes as many as 138 million SMEs will have taken up cloud solutions by the end of 2011.
The research data shows the fastest growth rate was occurring for infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service sectors at more than 26%.
According to TechAisle, the business productivity sector, as catered for by Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365 or Google Docs, is also showing a healthy growth rate of 24%.
SME cloud adoption is being led by storage and security solutions, which are closely followed by e-mail, notes Inspireme.co.uk.
While growth figures are positive, TechAisle says adoption is slower than it could be, due to hesitation on the part of SMEs about making the move to cloud services.
The report says: “[The] biggest challenge is limited understanding of cloud computing by SMEs which restricts demand to simpler solutions that are not business critical.”
The US currently leads the way in terms of adoption rates but emerging nations account for the highest levels of growth, according to Experian QAS.
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