October 25, 2011 04:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Parallels Reveals £660m Cloud Services
Market Opportunities in the UK for Small
and Medium Businesses (SMBs)
Upwards of 62% of SMBs in the UK plan migration to hosted servers and 10% plan increased
spending on hosted applications, illustrating Cloud growth opportunities for service providers
WorldHostingDays Local (WHD.local) UK 2011
LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Parallels, the hosting and Cloud services enablement leader,
today released the key findings of Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ for the UK, a report that
illustrates how service providers can profit by delivering Cloud services to small and medium
businesses (SMBs). Parallels estimates that the UK SMB Cloud services market opportunity is
£660m and growing, with many small companies reporting plans to increase their switch to
hosted servers by 42-62 percent alone. The research will be presented today at
WorldHostingDays Local (WHD.local) UK, where industry leaders will gather to discuss current
trends in hosting and Cloud services in the UK and across Europe.
“Parallels SMB Cloud Insights for the UK provides service providers with the accurate roadmap
needed to ensure that they can profit from the £660m growing market opportunity to deliver
Cloud services to SMBs.”
Parallels SMB Cloud Insights for the UK addresses the types of Cloud services that hold the
most appeal for SMBs and details the best opportunities for service providers to drive growth
and revenue in the UK hosting market. Parallels concludes that service providers should focus on
delivering profitable, value-added services beyond basic hosting, such as web and social media
presence applications, content management and online customer relationship management
(CRM) tools. In addition, the report identifies the opportunities to provide Cloud-based
operational services such as hosted infrastructure/hosted communications, online backup and
storage and hosted e-mail and archiving.
“The migration to Cloud services continues to have a major impact on how small and medium
businesses acquire and manage their IT services. The challenge to service providers is to
recognise that not all SMBs have the same priorities, so a tailored approach to delivering hosted
services will need to be taken into consideration,” said John Zanni, Vice President of Service
Provider Marketing and Alliances, Parallels. “Parallels SMB Cloud Insights for the UK provides
service providers with the accurate roadmap needed to ensure that they can profit from the
£660m growing market opportunity to deliver Cloud services to SMBs.”
Key highlights from the report include:
Hosted Infrastructure: a key opportunity in the UK SMB Cloud market is the replacement of in-
house servers with hosted servers:
o 20 percent of micro SMBs (companies with 1-9 employees) currently use in-house
servers, and of those 42 percent plan to switch from in-house to hosted servers in the
next three years
o 50 percent of small SMBs (companies with 10-49 employees) have in-house servers, and
62 percent of those are planning to switch to hosted servers in the next three years
Web Presence: opportunities to sell site building, e-commerce and social media management
applications, as SMBs still trail larger companies:
o 28 percent of small SMBs and 31 percent of medium SMBs have e-commerce
capabilities, while only 15 percent of micro SMBs have these
o 50 percent of UK SMBs still design their websites in-house
o Facebook is the second leading form of web presence for SMBs with 28 percent actively
using the website, followed by LinkedIn with 24 percent
Hosted Communication and Collaboration: SMBs report cost being the major factor for
switching to hosted/paid-hosted communications services, such as hosted PBX and e-mail:
o Only 4 percent of small and 11 percent of medium businesses pay for premium hosted
e-mail services
o 12 percent of micro SMBs and 36 percent of small SMBs currently use in-house e-mail
servers
Other Hosted Applications (SaaS)
o While a significant portion of online application use is still free, UK SMBs plan a net
increase of at least 10% in spending across several categories of online applications,
including online accounting, phone conferencing and file sharing
All Parallels SMB Cloud Insights Reports can be downloaded at
http://www.parallels.com/SMBreport2011.
About Parallels
Parallels is a worldwide leader in hosting and Cloud service enablement and desktop
virtualization. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with more than 800
employees in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visit
www.parallels.com/uk/spp/, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ParallelsCloud, and Like
us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ParallelsCloud.
Contacts
Bite Communications London for Parallels
Jamie Foote, + 020 8834 3402
jamie.foote@bitecommunications.com
or
Parallels
Senior Director, Parallels Service Provider Public and Analyst Relations
Rich Teplitsky, +1 425-282-1731
richt@parallels.com