To mark small business month in October 2011, ITBusiness.ca conducted a survey of Canada’s small to medium-sized businesses to ask them about technology: their challenges, their pain points, and their successes.
Here’s what we found.
IT World Canada editor-in-chief Shane Schick and ITBusiness.ca associate editor Brian Jackson discuss learnings from our annual survey.
State of the Canadian SMB features
Two-thirds of Canadian SMBs run Windows 7, or plan to this year
While many SMBs don’t preoccupy themselves with running the latest operating system available, most have either completely migrated to Windows 7 or at least started replacing older OSes with Microsoft’s 2009 release. As for Windows 8, it’s not even on the radar of most firms.
SMBs move cautiously into the cloud
Forty-five per cent of Canadian SMBs use some form of cloud computing – mostly software as a service. For those that don’t, security is the biggest obstacle, followed by cost concerns. But is the cloud less costly and more secure than what many of them have today?
Canadian firms won’t part with current technology
Businesses are just warming up to the idea of doing away with PDAs, netbooks, and landlines. But very few will part with laptops or desktops.
SMBs don’t have time, money for social media
Entrepreneurs are just too tired and broke to engage in social media according to a recent survey by ITBsiness.ca and Dell Canada.