How a small business can save more than 80% on an annual IT budget

Another influential US business analyst has weighed into the cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) debate. McKinsey & Co analyst Will Forest's presentation goes into considerable detail on definitions and where the technology is making its impact.

The presentation supports what we have been saying for the past few months: cloud services and SaaS can provide significant benefits to small and medium sized businesses - especially when those businesses don't already have cash and resources tied up in expensive business software, data centres or storage. This is because it gives smaller businesses access to these applications and functions without the overhead.

Is the cloud mature enough to help large enterprises save money? Maybe. But frankly, businesses of that size have the budget to experiment. Smaller businesses don't - so they are likely to simply get on with their business and take advantage of the SaaS model, as Gooroo's recent survey says.