SMBs embracing cloud at rapid pace: Survey

BANGALORE, INDIA: Small and medium businesses across the world have technologically evolved over the years. With increasing technology adoptions, the year 2012 has seen some significant advances in businesses.

Tablet adoption has kept its momentum and nears smartphone levels and hardware continues to take lion's share of IT spend.

According to a survey by SpiceWorks, 53 pc of SMBs support tablets on their network, making them almost as popular as smartphones which are supported by 59 pc of SMBs.

Hardware accounts for the largest share of SMB IT budgets at 40 pc, followed by software at 34 pc and IT services at 26 pc.

The study says cloud services are now used by 62 pc of SMBs, up from 48 pc in the first half of 2012. By early 2013, 73 pc of SMBs plan to adopt cloud services.

When it comes to BYOD, 59 pc SMBs support a BYOD initiative, but IT pros remain split on supporting this policy. Our survey i nds that 14 pc of SMBs fully embrace the trend, 32 pc note that it works well for some devices, but not for others, 24 pc claim it's a headache for their IT department, and the remaining 30 pc have not formed an opinion. Notably, SMBs with less than 20 employees are embracing the trend with over 70pc supporting BYOD.

The State of SMB IT survey included 1,295 respondents from 95 countries around the world. Forty percent of respondents were from North America, 32 percent from EMEA, 25 percent from Asia-Pacific, and 4 percent from Latin America. For more information on this survey visit www.spiceworks.com/voice-of-it.