Small businesses (10-99 employees) perceive the cloud as essential to success. While they lag behind larger enterprises in technology adoption, they plan to invest in technologies such as AI/ML, cloud, and automation to achieve their business goals. In the 2024 Frost & Sullivan Global Cloud Decision-Maker survey, small business respondents shared their perceptions, purchase decisions, and plans related to cloud, IT, and AI. Key findings include:
• AI is considered a strategic investment to help achieve business goals. Top drivers for AI investments include improving operations, enhancing the employee experience, and boosting innovation.
• The percentage of small businesses using public and multi-cloud infrastructure will double by 2026; the percentage using hybrid cloud will triple. At the same time, small businesses plan to retain infrastructure on-premises, primarily to support legacy applications.
• Small businesses turn to managed service providers (MSPs) to fill expertise gaps, especially in application development, data migration, and data management.
This report offers small businesses and IT service providers a glimpse of the near future for the cloud and AI markets.
- Research Objectives and Methodology
- Respondent Profile - Small Businesses
- Key Findings
- Cloud Adoption is Perceived as Essential to Small Business Success
- Small Businesses Prioritize Growing Revenue & AI Adoption
- Hybrid and Multi-cloud are Essential For Business Success
- Small Businesses Explore all Cloud Types
- Top Reasons for Deploying Apps in the Public Cloud
- Security and Costs Pose Challenges
- On-Premises Data Centers Remain Integral to Small Business IT Strategies
- On-Premises Data Center Use Trend Among Small Businesses
- Small Business Employees Prefer the Familiarity of On-Premises Solutions
- Small Businesses Will Slowly Migrate Legacy Apps to Cloud
- Migrating Workloads to the Cloud
- Modernization Approaches for Legacy Workloads
- Small Businesses Use Third-Party Services to Manage and Optimize their Cloud Environments
- Third-Party Services to Support Small Business Cloud Strategies
- Quick Delivery, Efficient Workload Management Top MSP Benefits
- Small Businesses Embrace AI
- Small Businesses Begin their AI Journeys
- AI Supports Better Operations & Talent Management
- Small Businesses Deploy Apps Integrated with GenAI
- Appendix
- Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine™
- Why is it Increasingly Difficult to Grow?
- The Strategic Imperative 8™
- Next Steps
- Benefits and Impacts of Growth Opportunities
- Next Steps
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