Security will become a key factor in the popularity of cloud services

Recently, a cloud computing research report sponsored by Microsoft showed that cloud computing is a good way to effectively increase security and save costs for those small and medium enterprises that actually use cloud services.

The report also said that among those SMBs that did not use cloud services, the main concern was cloud computing security issues and the cost of cloud migration as an obstacle.

According to Tim Rains, director of Microsoft's Trusted Computing, the grave of this research is to find out what SMEs expect from cloud services and to make a realistic comparison with those who are already experiencing cloud services.

According to the report, the security gain is the average 18 hours of security management time a cloud service can reduce weekly. Rains explained that this is because most of the security management is done by the provider. "While cloud computing can not eliminate the need for patch management within the enterprise, the need for security management will be greatly reduced."

And because providers can regularly patch, do upgrades, so the cloud can save money, but also improve security.

The report said that over the past three years, companies using cloud services have seen a five-fold reduction in their security spending compared to unused cloud services. Of those using cloud services, 20% said they reduced the cost of security management, compared to just 4% of unused cloud services.

And 40% of organizations that are not using cloud services say security is the reason they are not using cloud services, but 67% say they may be more confident with industry safety standards cloud service. Thirty-eight percent of companies said they would have more confidence in buying cloud services if they had visibility into the cloud provider's operations network and customers could see how security standards and best practices were mapped.

One-third of organizations that have not used cloud services say they believe the cost of cloud migration is an obstacle to their unused cloud services.

The report surveyed 94 SMEs using cloud services and 93 SMEs that did not use cloud services. Microsoft said that their definition of cloud users is through the subscription model using the cloud services business, as to the use of SaaS, IaaS or PaaS is no distinction.

The survey, conducted by comScore, a research firm, did not reveal to surveyed companies that the survey was sponsored by Microsoft. Nor did it investigate which cloud vendor's service was used by the companies surveyed.

Small and medium-sized businesses are defined as the networking of the PC between 100 to 250 sets of enterprises.