Cloud services in the present or in the future of micro-enterprises

This paper presents the results of a study conducted in Slovenia between January and June 2011 in Slovene micro-enterprises. We used a structured questionnaire with some demographic questions about business computerization, the owner’s characteristics and some questions about the level of awareness of Cloud computing and what significance have the listed properties of Cloud computing services for owners to hire Cloud solutions. The results show that almost two thirds of micro-enterprises did not know anything about Cloud computing at that time. One of the most important information source on Cloud computing was the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Micro-enterprises showed the highest interest in the possibility of hiring IaaS – data store capacities and backups. As the most important characteristics they highlight reliability, security and performance of Cloud solutions. The results of this study were compared with the outcome of some other comparable studies, and some recommendations for micro-enterprises are given.