Cloud for small businesses: ‘SMBs can take advantage of competition between Microsoft, AWS, Google, others’

By Christopher Richard

Technology for MSMEs: Small and medium businesses (SMBs) come with their own DNA. When you work with the SMBs today as well as with the Enterprises, you will notice a huge difference in their thought process, their way of thinking, and their decision making. They seem so varied and have different data points in terms of driving digital transformation, adaption, or any form of change in business. Now, this difference is primarily because an SMB in nature does things only when the business feels the strong need for that. Most SMBs and MSMEs might listen to several advices from different people suggesting them to move to the cloud but, they will make that move only when they feel the strong need for it. Until then, it could very well be the best thing that they can do but still, they will not.

Based on today’s business environments, we can see that most of the SMB/SMEs in India are basically hungry for success, passionate about technology, and want to adopt technologies in order to succeed. Now, since the cloud plays an important and major role in digital transformation, you will see most of the SMBs today finding the need to move to the cloud rather than being advised by others. This itself will basically ensure that a lot more SMBs will definitely move to the cloud in 2021. They are interested in knowing and understanding how the cloud will help them improve their business in today’s world where software as a service has basically become predominantly successful.

For an SMB, SaaS offering is ideal because it comes at very cost-effective rates. Who could have ever thought that one day we can have a mailing system at just Rs 100 per month where we don’t have to worry about the reliability of mails, whether they are delivered or not etc? But that is exactly what we all actually have with us today and it’s one of the important ways how the SMBs are being benefited. You can also look at various softwares today like Financial softwares or CRM software, all available for a couple of hundreds or thousands of rupees. Most SMBs started adopting software as a service almost instantaneously because they were able to see all these benefits.

In 2021, we will also be able to witness new entrances into the cloud space from the SMB sector where the businesses were traditionally using free email accounts and only free tools. But there will be a shift from there, especially considering that data security is one of the biggest concerns today. SMBs will become cautious about privacy and thus are starting to use or will soon start using paid and licensed softwares instead of the free softwares or versions that come with a lot of privacy violations. So, they will benefit significantly by ensuring that they not only make themselves feel more secure and safe but also make their customers feel more secure and safe, thereby increasing their business footprint. SMBs can also experience some great help coming in their way as the big giants continue to compete for the market share in the space.

SMBs can take full advantage of this competition between the giants like Microsoft, AWS, Google, etc. and be able to benefit from the scenario in terms of the experience these OEMs bring to the table, as well as from various offers like discounts, free credits and GTM programs which are part of the packages provided by some of these cloud providers. While the OEMs are hungry for market shares, it’s the SMBs’ golden days of basically leveraging that hunger to their benefit. Most SMBs who shifted to the cloud in the past couple of years have only moved on to grow more adaptive to technologies, host everything on the cloud and today we have most SMBs who are 100 per cent on cloud, where they don’t have any software footprint or digital footprint on-premises.

What we will definitely see in 2021 is that SMBs will continue to be and do so, based on the various benefits they see in terms of digital automation, improving human efficiency and productivity among the people who work with them, and especially being able to grow along with the OEMs and the partners with their benefits. Every day we see SMBs moving to the cloud without increasing any of their expenses but instead being able to adapt to the cloud without even having any of the inbuilt teams to help them manage their cloud.

Christopher Richard, MD & Chief Cloud Architect, G7 CR Technologies India Pvt Ltd. Views expressed are the author’s own.