Report: SMB Cloud Spending to Reach $95B by 2015

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A new report from cloud computing tool vendor Parallels indicates that the small business cloud market is expanding rapidly. They forecast that small businesses will spend nearly $100 billion on cloud computing within two years.

Nathan Eddy with eWeek reported, “The 2012 cloud services market has grown to $45 billion as at least 6 million small to medium-size businesses (SMBs) entered the cloud market for the first time last year, and the global market will continue to grow at 28 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2015 to a forecast of $95 billion, according to hosting and cloud services enablement specialist Parallels’ SMB Cloud Insights report.”

According to the Parallels press release, “In the United States, the SMB cloud market is now $18.9 billion USD and is forecast to grow at a 19 percent CAGR through 2015. This growth is driven by SaaS applications, which saw 60 percent growth in 2012. Additionally, 68 percent of SMBs indicated they would prefer to buy their cloud services as part of a discounted bundle.”

Web Host Industry Review’s Liam Eagle noted, “In the currently-released study, Parallels says the results identify storage as a ‘strong upsell opportunity for infrastructure-as-a-service providers,’ with 50 percent of SMBs indicating they’re willing to pay more for additional storage. It also identifies website building tools as a way for service providers to differentiate their offerings, with 22 percent of US SMBs saying they use such a tool now and 30 percent saying they plan to by 2015.”

Computer Weekly’s Adrian Bridgwater commented, “Anyway, the small to medium sized cloud has arrived and is continuing to arrive with increasing speed. Building the applications and ancillary services on top of these new virtualisation instances is where some of the smart money is today.”