Decision points for adoption cloud computing in small, medium enterprises (SMEs)

This study is on adoption of cloud computing by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India. With advent of cloud computing technologies, firms are able to concentrate on their core activities while outsourcing the entire technology related supporting processes. This approach has been adopted by many firms which have resulted in lowering operational cost without losing focus on customer needs. However, the adoption has not been high among small and medium enterprises. This paper, through preliminary survey, finds out different situations for adopting cloud computing services. It was found that SMEs can benefit the most if they extend the adoption of cloud services for computation intensive jobs like data mining, modeling and simulation. The regular advantages for SMEs have been re-established such as lowering investment in hardware, more efficient use of computing systems in existing data centers, easier scale-up of the applications and services, cost saving on technology infrastructure and faster software upgrades without much expense. The results can be used by SMEs as decision point for adopting cloud services.