Small business cloud adoption in 2021 continues to demonstrate the strong growth we have seen in the business world for the last several years.
As digital technology becomes an increasingly central aspect of business operations, it’s imperative that organizations of all sizes implement strategies for digitization that can allow them to be more competitive.
This growth has been evident in adoption trends throughout the 2010s.
While in 2011 51% of organizations had at least one portion of their computing infrastructure based in the cloud, that figure had by 2020 risen to 81% and is expected to increase further through the 2020s.
Why Are Small Businesses Adopting Cloud Solutions?
Put simply, cloud-based solutions and infrastructure are an essential and necessary component of a modern company.
This is because of a variety of reasons, but they can generally be boiled down to a few key factors—efficiency, productivity, and scalability.
Efficiency typically manifests in terms of workflows as it relates to automation. For example, document workflow is a common way businesses use digital means to streamline processes that were previously manual.
Productivity is about removing barriers to work for employees. Consider that in manual systems, it’s not uncommon for employees to spend around a quarter of their time simply looking for information in order to their jobs.
In these situations where companies are overly reliant on manual processes, centralizing data and information to improve productivity is crucial, and another reason small business cloud adoption has grown so substantially.
As far as scalability is concerned, SMBs in particular need to be able to scale their IT infrastructure and not run the risk of being burdened with servers that are outdated and not able to handle heavier workloads as the business increases its software needs.
Reluctance to Adopt and Changes
Digital solutions have always traditionally been a costly endeavor for organizations to implement, even more so when projects take longer than expected, run over budget, or end up coming short of initial expectations.
Because of this, there has often been a level of reluctance among organizations to commit to digital transformations purely out of fear of being lumbered with technology they is ineffective and expensive.
So what has changed to cause the uptick in adoption over recent years?
Firstly, software has become a lot more affordable and scalable because of cloud offerings. In essence, this means businesses no longer have to invest in on-site IT infrastructure to support their tech adoptions and can instead rely on data centers provided by the vendors.
Secondly, integration between systems in different departments and the unification of data across an entire organization has become a crucial aspiration for businesses that want to more heavily leverage the data they possess, which is to say most businesses.
Small Business Cloud Adoption 2021
Take a look at our infographic to see the state of small business cloud adoption in 2021.
