Home-Based Businesses to Adopt Cloud Services

Surviving the economic pressures of today has been difficult for most businesses, especially the smallest. But despite the economic downturn, Home-Based Business (HBB) appears to be a high growth sector for employment in the U.S. market. Moreover, American HBBs are showing strong signs of sustained growth plans into the foreseeable future.

According to the latest market study by AMI-Partners, there was an 11 percent increase in those who started their home-based business due to corporate downsizing last year.

When some employees are downsized from their employment at larger companies, they are motivated to create their own future employment path -- by starting their own company, based out of their home office.

"What's interesting is that 80 percent of those who became HBBs because of downsizing from a larger company do not plan to return to the corporate workforce," says Jessica Efta, manager of market development at AMI-Partners.

Committed to Ongoing Self-Employment 

Apparently, many survey respondents say they plan to stay HBBs for the long term. Utilizing today's numerous productivity-enhancing business technologies, a small business owner does not need a retail storefront or traditional office building to conduct a successful commercial operation.

Last year, sole proprietorship businesses were two thirds of the home-based business market -- this year it is only one third of the total market, indicating that some home-based businesses are growing and hiring new employees.

This trend will likely continue. Over the last year, there was a 10 percent jump in respondents who say they have plans to grow their business and hire more employees.

Business Technology and Cloud Services Adoption

According to the AMI assessment, reported revenues became positive for HBBs in 2010 and projections show positive growth expectations for 2011. As average employee size increased, so did the average PC use per company.

Cloud computing is another area of growing interest among HBBs. One quarter of U.S. home-based business owners are interested in procuring hosted applications -- nearly double the amount of their nearest peer group (small businesses operating out of a commercial setting, with fewer than 5 employees).

Considering the 16 million home-based businesses already in the U.S. market, this translates into a significant new market development opportunity for on-demand managed cloud service providers.