Techaisle Blog

Techaisle’s upcoming detailed survey report on US SMB & Midmarket SaaS Adoption Trends shows evidence that connected cloud applications really matter for SMBs. 16% of SMBs have already connected SaaS applications across the enterprise and another 10% are on their enterprise-wide connected SaaS journey. These SMBs are getting the benefits of business growth, enterprise agility, corporate efficiency, collaboration and alignment.

Cloud is the agility platform and SaaS offers a zero-friction option for automating processes. The first entry point to cloud in many SMBs is the purchase of a specific business application by a business user. A typical example is of SMB marketing acquiring a SaaS application to help with social presence management, or sales, as is often the case, acquiring a cloud based CRM to track opportunities. Each of these disconnected siloed SaaS applications do provide real & immediate benefits in terms of enhancing individual productivity and enhancing morale and helping with recruitment of tech savvy new workers. However, where cloud starts to differentiate itself and create meaningful impact for SMBs is in connected automation across related activities and applications categories.

SMB Cloud is no longer a trend that is discrete from mainstream IT. Data presented in Techaisle’s cloud reports shows that cloud is viewed as an IT priority by 96% of US SMBs, by over 85% of European SMBs and nearly 65% of Asia/Pacific SMBs. Within Asia/Pacific if very small businesses are excluded then cloud as a priority jumps substantially. Cloud is not a future issue – it has become an essential component of SMB IT and is the new IT reality. Techaisle’s surveys of SMBs not only found a strong link between cloud and IT – it also found a strong link between cloud, IT and business success. The research data shows that technology is viewed as critical to the success of SMB businesses and that cloud provides a compelling response to SMB business issues and cloud also addresses constraints within the SMB market.

SMBs are sometimes seen as small fish in a pond that is also home to much larger creatures. They are subject to tides and actions that tend to derail their businesses and are strongly felt: when business lags, when orders grow sparse, when supplier costs increase, when the competitive environment changes. Cloud offers direct relief for several of these business pressures.