Accounting software company MYOB says half of all new registrations it takes in New Zealand are for the company’s cloud products.Chief technology officer Simon Raik-Allen says New Zealand is noticeably ahead of Australia when it comes to cloud computing. Uptake here is around 50 percent while on the other side of the Tasman around 40 percent of registrations are for cloud products.
In both cases the change has been rapid. Raik-Allen *says two years ago the numbers in both countries was around eight percent. He says compared with the rest of the world both Australia and New Zealand are enthusiastic cloud adopters.
There’s a marked difference between small business users and the rest of the market. Raik-Allen says: “When we surveyed ANZ about cloud, 16 percent of small business users say they use the cloud. This compares with 80 percent of users in larger companies.” There could be a perception problem here though, he says eight percent of small business users didn’t know if they were using the cloud or not.Perhaps this isn’t so surprising. When MYOB did market research before entering the cloud market one of the most common responses from customers was that they don’t care how the accounting software is delivered so long as all the important features are available.
Raik-Allen says the spadework for business acceptance of cloud computing was done more than a decade ago when online banking was introduced. He says the banks offered easy to use sites that made people comfortable with the idea of dealing with money on a screen.
He says there’s still plenty of work to be done educating customers about the benefits of the cloud. There’s clear evidence that once companies make the move, they perform better. He says cloud users tend to have more sales in the pipeline and are more likely to see rising revenues.