Microsoft recently held a survey among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the US to find out what pain points they experienced with the business technology they were using. The survey found that more SMEs than expected were behind in using cloud computing technology. While many SMEs were making the most of their business technology, there were some who were behind the latest trends and developments. These SMEs complained about slow email, useless websites and storage issues.
Highlights (or rather, lowlights) of the survey include:
- Only 30% of small businesses are using cloud technology.
- 10% are not familiar with cloud technology at all.
- 30% of respondents said that they still primarily use filing cabinets and folders to manage their content.
- 12% said that they do not have a good solution for collecting, storing and sharing content.
- Upgrading the company website is a priority for half of small businesses surveyed (50%).
Joining the Cloud can help an SME owner address these pain points.
- Your content is safe in the Cloud, where you can manage it easily and it is regularly backed up.
- This also makes business continuation and disaster recovery faster and easier.
- You can access your data from anywhere at any time as the Cloud makes it available remotely.
- Because the data is stored in one central place and is so easily accessible, it becomes easier to share among employees, which promotes team work and improves the overall quality of your product or service.
- Technology is more affordable as you can use virtualised servers in the cloud.
- In addition, software also becomes more affordable as programmes are automatically updated in the Cloud and you only pay for what you use.
- By using Cloud storage and taking advantage of virtualisation, the SME owner can have peace of mind and focus on building his business.
It is clear that Cloud technology holds many benefits for SME business owners. While the technology initially might seem confusing and intimidating, it is easy once explained and can boost your business in so many ways that it is worthless.
