Japan Small and Medium Business Markets Compliance and IT Usage Survey 2011: From Passive to Active Management

This IDC study, which is a translation of the Japanese report IDC #J11120107, analyzes the results of the survey conducted in September 2011 of chief compliance officers (CCOs) from 180 listed and non-listed financial institutions with fewer than 999 employees. This study also estimates the size and spending of the compliance-related IT market (hardware, software, and IT services) based on the actual spending in 2010 and estimated spending for the period 2011-2015.

The survey results show that the legal challenges faced by SMBs in terms of contract management, security sharing responsibility, and so on impede small and medium-sized businesses' (SMBs) cloud implementations. "IT vendors should seek to collaborate with auditors/accounting firms, law firms, and third-party certification agencies to provide standardized compliance/security management for cloud environment. They should also actively promote the creation of common system frameworks, such as service-level agreements (SLA) that are in accordance with the real situation faced by SMBs," says Eiji Sasahara, research manager, IT Spending, IDC Japan.