Cloud Adoption Triggering Fundamental Changes In Mid-Market And SMB

Migration to the Cloud is accelerating, according to a study, as 44 percent of companies claim to have at least one business application on the cloud and over 70 percent indicate they will move more within the next 12 months

Other findings:

-- Mobility Drives Cloud Migration: 38 percent of respondents indicated that the need to support greater workforce mobility is a trigger for cloud adoption

-- Early Adopters are Growth Companies: Companies growing >10 percent per year were nearly twice as likely to move software and infrastructure to the cloud

-- Marketing, Sales Most Accepted Cloud Applications: While 36 percent of companies using marketing automation do so via the cloud, and 29 percent of CRM is cloud-deployed, >49 percent of companies are planning to move one or more of these applications to the cloud within 12 months

-- Private Cloud Networks Preferred: 52 percent of respondents preferred to deploy on some sort of "private cloud" as oppose to multi-tenant public clouds

-- Better Security Becoming a Cloud Asset: 48 percent of respondents believed that data security would actually be better on the cloud, recognizing the investment and expertise needed to establish and maintain secure computing environments

-- 3rd Party Channels Remain Critical: 67 percent of respondents preferred to purchase software applications through a 3rd party value-added managed service provider; this appears to be due to a need for both higher service levels and functional expertise

Comment from Tim Furey, founder of MarketBridge: Adoption of cloud-based information technology by mid-market and SMB companies -- particularly in customer facing business processes such as Marketing, Sales, and Customer Intelligence -- is being accepted more rapidly than many industry analysts originally predicted. While the practicality and challenges of cloud migration may slow down C-level executives' aggressive expectations, there is no doubt that the shift will happen rapidly over the next 2-3 years. The CEO and other senior executives outside of IT are more involved in these decisions than ever, and their level of cloud technology understanding is surprisingly high.

About the study: The study comprised the preliminary findings of a December survey of 1,000 North American mid-market and small businesses and their adoption of cloud-based information technologies. The research was performed by MarketBridge, a provider of technology-enabled Marketing & Sales Managed Services and Solutions. In parallel with its "Customer Cloud Adoption" research, MarketBridge is also completing research on "Channel Cloud Adoption" to understand how traditional resellers of on-premise software and hardware are adapting to the rapid migration to off-premise and shared IT infrastructure.

Contact: http://www.market-bridge.com