AMI Research: Cloud-based storage resonates with SMB market

Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are no less eager than their enterprise counterparts to hand off nonessential functions like storage to a service provider's cloud network. A new AMI Research report, U.S. SMB Cloud Playbook, revealed that SMBs, not surprisingly, see cloud services as a way to reduce costs, improve flexibility, and maintain privacy of sensitive data.

Nichelle Grannum, Survey Research Analyst at AMI, said that a growing number of "U.S. SMBs are moving to the cloud to enhance existing packaged applications, such as CRM databases."

Grannum added that "cloud storage provides these companies with the latest storage technology realizing a significant reduction in IT overhead due to decreased investment in physical storage devices on their premises."

The study also found that 31 percent of the one million U.S. SMBs using hosted storage have a large amount of mobile workers in the field like sales reps that need to transfer data from their smartphone devices to the headquarter site.

These factors, argue AMI, will help drive up the hosted storage market by 11 percent yearly through 2015, to $270 million.

For more:
- see the release

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