Who Is Cloud Computing For, Anyway?

A recent Forrester research report seems to challenge the notion that cloud computing is of most value to small and midsize companies, finding that a higher percentage of enterprises are aware of -- and interested in -- the technology. But if you ask me, the enormous diversity in the technological needs and savvy of smaller companies renders those findings moot.In the Forrester report, titled Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong About Cloud IaaS , analyst Frank Gillet says that the research debunks stereotypes about who is interested in Infrastructure as a Service, where companies buy computing power from vendors like Amazon EC2, Savvis, Mosso and now, Verizon.

And over at InformationWeek, Mary Hayes Weier points out that the research reveals that one out of four large companies (1,000+ employees) are interested in infrastructure-as-a-service compared to just 18% of midmarket companies and 15% of small businesses.

Interestingly, cloud computing awareness was fairly constant across company size, with slightly more enterprises than SMBs completely clueless about cloud computing.

That's all well and good, but all it really tells us is that large enterprises have more technology resources and expertise, and are in a better position to investigate, and invest in, new technologies. But we already knew that.

The study doesn't address the more-important issue of where Cloud Computing is most appropriate. And in bMighty's view, that remains small and midsize companies, for all the well-known reasons: less legacy infrastructure, fewer security and compliance issues, greater capital expenditure constraints, smaller internal IT staffs, and a bigger appetite for innovation.

And one more thing. Given the exponentially larger number of small and midsize businesses, even if they're a few percentage points less likely than enterprises to head to the cloud, there will still be waaayyyy more SMBs in the cloud than there will be enterprises.

More From bMighty:Cloud Computing: Useful Technology Or Mere Marketing Buzzword?Should Your Business Move To The Cloud?

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