Business Technology Roundtable

More IT managers will turn to cloud services to accelerate their responsiveness to business needs. Quicker IT deployments, end-user self-service, and reduced start-up costs equate to faster time-to-market for many organizations. Others will want to take advantage of the ability to pivot more quickly and adapt to market changes. Beyond the desire for better, faster and cheaper processes, cloud services will enable entirely new business models and associated revenue streams. Acceptance will advance as cloud architectures prove out the opportunities for real business innovation and new functionality. There is no single journey to cloud adoption, but rather a wide variety of entrance ramps and paths. On the demand side, organizations have different starting points and different objectives. Fortunately, public cloud computing services can unleash an exciting mix of new technologies, architectures, and organizational approaches. Let’s consider the needs of the evolving media sector.

Surviving the economic pressures of today has been difficult for most businesses, especially the smallest. But despite the economic downturn, Home-Based Business (HBB) appears to be a high growth sector for employment in the U.S. market. Moreover, American HBBs are showing strong signs of sustained growth plans into the foreseeable future. According to the latest market study by AMI-Partners , there was an 11 percent increase in those who started their home-based business due to corporate downsizing last year. When some employees are downsized from their employment at larger companies, they are motivated to create their own future employment path -- by starting their own company, based out of their home office. "What's interesting is that 80 percent of those who became HBBs because of downsizing from a larger company do not plan to return to the corporate workforce," says Jessica Efta, manager of market development at AMI-Partners. Committed to Ongoing Self-Employ

The promise of cloud computing and application hosting benefits are already delivering practical solutions to very real business problems, according to the latest market study by In-Stat . In fact, many small businesses are using managed cloud services as their primary method to solve a variety of IT requirements. "Web hosting and data storage are the most obvious IT needs that can be addressed by public cloud services" says Greg Potter, Research Analyst at In-Stat. "With the advent of Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings many businesses are realizing that much of their IT needs can be fulfilled without the need for expensive networking equipment and high-end computers." Moreover, many small businesses are now re-visiting the use of thin clients for most of their employees, as the need for increased computer processing power is rendered moot by the cloud. SMB IT Applications Transition to the Cloud For the SOHO and small business market, there is consid