BT sees SME cloud adoption rising 15 percent year-over-year

UK-based small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) continue to find value in cloud-based services. Joint research conducted by BT Business and the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) revealed that SME adoption of cloud services rose 15 percent in the past year. The survey, which was part of a larger study that looked at how UK-based SMEs use and benefit from new technology, showed that 69 percent of businesses use cloud-based applications, with 53 percent saying that they are "critical to effective remote working."

Another element the study uncovered was that nine out of ten, or 91 percent of companies, have at least one member of their staff working out of their house, while a fifth of businesses, or 19 percent, have over half of their workforce working away from their main office location.

Besides cloud-based applications, 56 percent of survey participants said other technologies seen as critical for effective remote working include remote access to company data, while another 64 and 33 percent cited Wi-Fi access and fiber-based broadband as key tools to operate when out of the office. Perhaps not surprisingly, mobile smartphones continue to have a large role for remote workers. Given the ease of use and ability to connect into a company network from any location, 68 percent of survey participants said that smartphones have "made the biggest difference to businesses in the last 12 months." Release