Cloud computing is coming of age. This is the finding of a survey sponsored by Microsoft on the appetite of small to medium-size firms in Africa and the Middle East for the service, which allows users to access computer programs over the Internet.


Of the 200 SA companies surveyed in the SMB cloud adoption study, 88% of those with more than 50 employees expect to be paying for up to five cloud services within three years. Instead of taking care of services like e-mails and data storage in-house, they are now more willing to outsource them.


Businesses are increasingly looking at cloud computing as a way to not only bring down IT costs but also to scale up their operations without seriously increasing overheads .


The survey backs up the belief of tech companies like Telkom and Business Connexion, which have invested heavily creating data centres to provide these services. The rate of investment in recent years has been so high there were concerns that companies in the sector were over investing in it.


For now, though, it seems they made the right call.




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