{"id":2497,"date":"2011-10-25T07:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-10-25T15:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=2497"},"modified":"2011-10-25T07:00:48","modified_gmt":"2011-10-25T15:00:48","slug":"saas-groundswell-of-cloud-adoption-by-smbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/saas-groundswell-of-cloud-adoption-by-smbs\/","title":{"rendered":"SaaS: Groundswell of Cloud Adoption by SMB's"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research data<\/a> from AMI-Partners<\/a> shows that as many as 570, 000 SMB<\/a>‘s (Small and Medium Sized Businesses) are currently using a SaaS-based CRM solution. \u00a0What’s more, the AMI report expects that the SaaS CRM market in the SMB segment will experience “double-digit” growth over the next five years. \u00a0By mid-2013, SaaS CRM spending will surpass the spending made by SMB companies on traditional on-premise CRM software. \u00a0During this time, the report expects that spending on on-premise CRM software will remain constant. \u00a0And by 2015, AMI expects the SMB SaaS CRM market to have tripled.<\/p>\n

570, 000 is a fairly big number. \u00a0Let’s consider the total number of SMB’s in the US. \u00a0While the definition of an SMB varies by industry, the US Small Business Administration typically defines an SMB<\/a> as a business with less than 500 employees. \u00a0Based on US Census data from 2008<\/a>, there are about 5.3 million companies in the United States with at least 1 employee and less than 500 employees, of which 3.6 million are companies that have less than 10 employees. \u00a0The AMI report numbers imply that more than a tenth of all SMB’s in the US are currently using SaaS-based CRM, and that number may reach 30 percent by 2015.<\/p>\n

The AMI report mentions three reasons why SMB’s are moving towards SaaS and cloud services:<\/p>\n