Microsoft: 70% of Small Businesses Have Yet to Adopt Cloud Solutions

A new Microsoft (MSFT) survey showed the majority of U.S. small business owners are familiar with cloud solutions but do not use them at their companies.

The survey of over 500 U.S. small business owners, commissioned by Microsoft for National Small Business Week, revealed 70 percent of small businesses currently don’t use cloud solutions. However, 86 percent of respondents said they believed technology was important to the overall success of their companies.

Other survey findings included the following:

Kirk Gregersen, general manager of Microsoft Office, commented on the survey results in a blog post:

“These findings tell us a number of things: despite understanding technology can have a significant impact on their companies, small businesses need cost effective, secure and reliable solutions that enable them to be productive from anywhere – and they have very little time to implement and manage those solutions.”

Microsoft has explored ways to expand its cloud services for small businesses recently. In January, GoDaddy began offering small businesses three Office 365 services – two email productivity suites and Email Essentials, a domain-based email and storage service.

John Case, Microsoft Office’s corporate vice president, told Talkin’ Cloud he believed his company’s partnership with GoDaddy would help small business owners in several ways.

“Office 365 is Microsoft’s fastest growing commercial product ever,” Case said. “Only Microsoft offers familiar Office tools in the cloud, respect for file integrity and design when documents are edited by multiple people.”