Just attended a small business conference recently focused on the future of IT service integrators for the small to medium business. The presentation talked about the spread of server consolidation, real time recovery strategies, and even topics like the “green computing” movement. Quite honestly, nothing that hasn’t been discussed a thousand times over. What was interesting, was the question posed to the speaker concerning services based on “cloud computing” from providers like Amazon. The cloud computing model of hosting services on a public or private cloud is without a doubt being reviewed and cautiously embraced by medium to large size companies looking to offload IT capital, staff, and operational expense. Good strategy, although riddled with business risk concerning security and IP rights. Still a very probable future for modern business. The question that comes to mind for me is this the start of another digital divide? Are the public cloud offerings economically accessible and understood by the small business?

Most small business rely on local network integrators to install and maintain single server installations, desktops, applications, and communications systems. Given this model, it is not in the interest of the network integrator to give up on a low effort reoccurring revenue stream and explain to the small business owner the benefits that come with hosted / cloud based services. This artificially makes the small business world appear unwilling or ready to adopt the cloud services model forcing few providers to customize offerings to this market’s  needs. Based on these observations the only conclusion I can arrive at is that the small business will make slow movement into the cloud one business function at a time. Providers like SalesForce.com will dominate getting the small business sector onboard with the technology trends happening rapidly in the enterprise tier. If I were a network integrator, I would beef up my data center and look for become a “mini cloud” for my existing customers and pull their current infrastructure within. Should be an interesting sector of the market to track over the next few years. Just my 2 cents!