IT Marketing World

Report: Cloud Trends Among IT Buyers

Twice as many SMB IT pros (28%) are using cloud solutions today compared to the second half of 2010 (14%), surpassing 2010 forecasts (24%). Growth plans for 2011 continue to be aggressive, as another 14% of IT professionals plan to start using the cloud by midyear. In all, 42% of SMB IT pros plan to be using cloud services by mid-2011.

And this uptake is hardly just for testing out new cloud services or a one-time activity. During the prolonged “winter” spanning 2009-2010, SMB IT pros spent their time investigating and evaluating various cloud services and solutions. As a result, concern over cloud solutions being a new/unproven technology dropped from the number one reason not to deploy cloud solutions in 2010 to fourth in 2011.

Additionally, all company sizes (less than 20 employees, 20-99 employees, 100 or more employees) are equally aggressive with cloud adoption today, a departure from the second half of 2010 when companies with fewer than 20 employees were almost twice as likely to adopt as larger businesses. What is this telling us? Larger companies, known to be more conservative (based on the amount already invested in infrastructure and risk adversity), are equally aggressive in utilization of cloud solutions today.

Among SMB IT pros using the cloud today, 39% use the cloud for web hosting, making it the single largest varietal in the cloud family. Another 14% plan to start using the cloud for web hosting within the first half of 2011. As for other cloud services, email hosting, data backup/recovery services and application hosting are also common uses in the cloud with 32%, 29% and 25% (respectively) using the cloud today for such services. Within the first half of 2011, another 18%, 21% and 19% respectively plan to begin using the cloud for these services as well.

Reginald Herde is director of marketing at Austin, TX-based Spiceworks, the fastest growing IT social business network with 1.6 million SMB IT professionals who buy and manage $268 billion worth of technology products and services each year.  He can be reached at reginald@spiceworks.com.  To read the entire Voice of IT report, click here.  Follow Spiceworks on Twitter@SpiceWired.