Small Business’s are now ready to engage with cloud computing, but are failing to consider safeguards as their businesses become more reliant on the Internet for common applications like word processing or spreadsheets, according to a report released today.The account, based on consultations with 270 SMBs, showed that manybusiness’s were turning over a switch to ‘cloud computing’ or Software as a Service (SaaS) – where IT services or applications are hosted on the Internet and delivered via a WWW browser, rather than sitting on servers or PC hard drives within a company’s offices. One in four respondents plan to move to cloud based services or applications within two years, with approximately half (47%) expected to do so within five years.But, whilst respondents were quick to point out the business benefits of cloud computing, including cost savings (35.2%) and increased remote and flexible working (34%), few said they had planned to re-evaluate their Internet connectivity – such as getting additional Leased Line capacity.Just one in ten said they had a official strategy that included consideration of Internet connectivity issues. Only 12% said they planned on increasing their Internet bandwidth to account for possible higher traffic levels, 13% said they would explore business persistence measures to safe-conduct their connection and only 9.2% said that they would put in place more demanding security measures.Clearly, SMBs are eager to embrace the many advantages that cloud computing and SaaS offers them, but they need to think about the big picture as well. Once the absolute majority of your mission-critical applications are hosted through the web, finding you have the most secure and available Internet access possible it becomes even more important. This should be prioritised just as extremely as the staff education or social issues when authorized switch over plans are developed.The additional investment in improved Internet Connectivity would be far less than the savings made by a switch to cloud computing: Businesses saving thousands of dollars by migrating to more efficient purchase models is possible due to the licensing alternatives that cloud computing opens up.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 7:28 am and is filed under Living With Telecommunication, Technology Hall, Web + Hub. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.