According to the latest MYOB Business Monitor - a six-monthly survey of SME owners - only 40 percent of these businesses are using at least one form of cloud computing.
And that includes approximately one-third of respondents that use social media.
This suggests that a substantial proportion of SMEs are still using conventional desktop software for core business functions such as accounting, CRM and industry-specific purposes.
One possible reason is cost: an already-purchased perpetual licence is effectively free for ongoing use, and the Business Monitor also found that cost was regarded as the main barrier to innovation by SMEs.
Other concerns that we sometimes hear from small business owners include privacy (suspicions that cloud providers or their employees may ferret around in their data), security (the perception that a cloud provider is more likely to be attacked than the business itself), and business continuity (eg, a feeling that internet connections are not sufficiently reliable, or worries that the cloud provider may not deliver adequate uptime or suffer a prolonged outage).
Whether these concerns are justified is a different matter, especially given the existence of small businesses that have adopted a cloud-first approach to IT.
