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The new technology landscape can offer operating efficiencies for all sizes of business.  In the last several months, we have seen this belief reinforced by the migration of leading public and private institutions onto both the Google Apps and the Office 365 platform.

On the public sphere, we saw The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration move onto the Google for Government platform, with 25,000 seats.  UC Berkeley (50,000 seats) also migrated to Google, and told us exactly why they chose Google over Microsoft.  More recently, The All India Council for Technical Education shook hands with Microsoft executives, a deal that will move 7 million students, faculty, and staff onto the Office 365 version for education.  This is now the largest ever cloud migration.  On the private side, and from the banking industry no less, the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, which is headquartered in Spain, recently moved 110,000 employees onto the Google Apps for Business platform.

Obviously, we are moving towards market majority who are now or will soon be leveraging the new platform for business efficiency.  Companies who are nervous about critical information will simply keep that information on their local servers.  For the day to day routine of employee collaboration and communication, the cloud based solutions are being adopted in droves.

These news items beg the question; what about the small business owner?  Can the cloud help small business operate leaner also?  My next blog post will offer an apples to apples cost analysis.