It’s a well-known fact that globally, enterprises have been rapidly adapting to the cloud and that digital transformation for mid and large enterprises has become the natural course to take for achieving growth and scalability.
The Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report states that 20% of large enterprises invest more than USD 12 million annually on public clouds, up by 7% from 2019.
While it’s clear that enterprises are well on their way to leveraging cloud for digital transformation, what have the SMBs been up to?
IDC FutureScape for Worldwide SMB 2020 predictions states that by 2021, 50% of SMBs will adopt a cloud-first approach when sourcing new software, infrastructure, or platforms, though transition of legacy systems will lag behind due to migration cost concerns.
The rate of SMBs moving to cloud and leveraging transformation, compared to enterprise, has been much slower. Many factors, including the following have been holding back small businesses from moving to the cloud:
- SMBs often feel that their IT team lacks the skillset required to efficiently leverage cloud technology. Continuous management of the cloud infrastructure and effective cloud migration are blind spots that business leaders find difficult to navigate.
- Many small businesses find it overwhelming to understand what, why and when to move and to come up with a cloud migration strategy that is well suited for the business.
- Fear that internet bandwidth can get heavily impacted when all services run on the cloud, as applications don’t run on the local network any longer.
- Loss of data, security, control, and higher costs are some of the other concerns that bog down SMBs from cloud adoption.
Have SMBs realized the cloud was originally made for them?
What many cloud solutions providers and business leaders have forgotten along the way is that the concept of the cloud was originally conceived with the needs of SMBs in mind. Why, and how you may ask.
- Reduce IT Costs & Scale – Customized, pay-as you go model helps small businesses avoid resource wastage resulting in more efficient IT budgeting. This model is perfect for businesses that are unsure about the growth of their client base, helping to meet demand and scale by allocating resources when required, without incurring additional expense.
- Secure & Protect your Data – Small businesses often find it difficult to secure large data volumes. Data protection with cloud services offers control over how the data is stored, secures data in transit and storage, and restricts data access to protect workloads with simple, powerful tools.
- Collaborate with Ease – A global economy has created the need for seamless collaboration between partners, suppliers, and customers. Cloud solutions allow small businesses to enable a work from anywhere, anytime setup through end user computing services and real time collaboration that provide flexibility and autonomy in work processes.
- Get Customer & Business Insights – Understanding customer behaviour and personalizing products and services determine business success. For this, every business needs data driven analytics. Data lakes are enabling small businesses to easily aggregate, process and store data from various sources, and benefit from actionable insights and quick decision making to deliver customer value.
- Accelerate Go to Market – Cloud solutions enable small businesses to build applications, add new capabilities and features quickly through fast paced product development. Small businesses need to set themselves apart, and cloud solutions bring the agility to innovate faster.
There are a lot more benefits that SMBs have been missing out on by not moving to cloud, such as better resilience, reduced risk, accessibility, and efficiency. SMBs have been foregoing these benefits mainly because they’re unable to overcome their fear of the unknown.
Umbrella Infocare has been helping businesses, both small and big to leverage the benefits of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to achieve efficiency, growth and productivity. We help you reinvent yourself on the cloud with solutions that fit your needs.
