New businesses believe cloud computing gives them access to applications they thought they could never afford, research suggests.
In a global economy that is short on job opportunities and financial lending, many people are looking to take their destiny in their own hands and start up their own business.
Depending on the type of industry a person has expertise in, this may be as simple as firing up a laptop and ensures that start-up capital is minimal.
However, according to new research, people are looking to give their businesses every opportunity to succeed and make it futureproof with the aid of cloud computing, which gives even the most modest venture access to greater flexibility and security via online document storage and disaster recovery.
Cloud computing has become very important to medium and large business operations in the last few years, but a study from the Manchester Business School, which was published by Forbes, shows that start-ups are now finding that cloud engagements are helping to keep costs low while sowing the seeds of innovation that is driving the recent entrepreneurial spurt.
Indeed, 62 per cent of the 1,300 respondents either agreed totally or at least in part with the statement that ‘cloud computing is a key factor in the recent boom of entrepreneurs and start-ups’.
Cloud computing is making a real difference to the IT landscape and opening all sorts of opportunities.
The majority of start-ups in the survey (52 per cent) said that they never thought that they would be able to afford the type of IT infrastructure that they currently have with the cloud. They reasoned that in the past, the cost of similar on-premises resources would have been prohibitive.
It is not a surprise then that 43 per cent of the new business owners questioned said that having access to huge document storage potential and other applications had made it "a lot easier" to set up their company and run their business.
Forbes suggests that this trend will result in more "extremely lightweight businesses" on the corporate landscape, which will be powered by applications running in a remote data centre.