A look back on the year that was from a tech perspective for small businesses.
There’s something refreshing about this time of year, yes it’s tiring and stressful while you try to close the year of business, put in a little extra work to compensate for Christmas holidays and simultaneously get the perfect gift for everyone! But it’s on to pastures new as with the end of one year comes the beginning of another. A chance to make a fresh start, set some new year goals (which you may or may not stick to, hmm, time will tell) and have the opportunity to review the year before, taking note of what you wish to change going forward.
Whilst there are always tech developments going on around us I have somehow managed not to become too caught up in it all, until this year… For SMBs too, it seems technology has certainly been top of mind.
As predicted, more SMBs are adopting some form of cloud services as many get over their fear of cloud and begin to avail of the many benefits it offers. Research conducted by Spiceworks – the world’s leading IT community – found that 62% of SMBs are now using some form of cloud services, an increase of 14% from the first half the year. The report also found that 73% of SMBs intend to adopt cloud services in the first half of 2013 indicating further growth of cloud technologies within this sector (full report available here).
Alongside cloud, outsourcing appears to be a growing trend. Comptia found that 20% of businesses are currently contracting cloud services from an external provider, a figure they expect to grow in light of more complex use of cloud services by micro and small businesses. Further, research conducted by the IDC indicates possible reasoning for outsourcing cloud services to be a lack internal knowledge in this area on the part of SMBs for which they seek the expertise of managed service providers (MSPs).
This year also saw the market for virtualisation maturing with SMBs considering the possible benefits, 84% cited server virtualisation as a “very important” strategic IT issue, according to AMI Partners. This trend is not surprising as the amount of data created and stored by SMBs has grown significantly over the past number of years. Virtualisation alleviates the need for multiple on-premise servers and their subsequent maintenance. By storing on a virtual machine (VM) SMBs can experience time and cost efficiencies coupled with reduced complexity of their IT infrastructure.
In terms of mobility, research compiled by FastHost has shown that 70% of SMBs require technology that allows employees to work from any location, driving ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD). This perhaps explains further researching findings from the IDC which found that small businesses are initially slower to adopt BYOD than their larger counterparts but when they do, they extend support to a larger share of their employees as the benefits of mobility become evident.
So it seems appropriate to say that SMBs are certainly embracing the big technology trends this year, which I can only imagine will continue into 2013 and beyond.
