About the survey Microsoft commissioned Spiceworks to conduct an online survey in August 2015 to examine the current state of IT for SMBs. A total of 264 surveys were collected from North America (70%) and EMEA (30%), and from industries including IT services, manufacturing, non-profit, finance, healthcare and construction. All respondents were IT professionals with insight into budgeting practices for their organisations, in roles that range from hands-on administration to high-level management. Their organisations are SMBs with fewer than 250 employees. Of these, 39% came from organisations with 100 to 249 employees, and 61% came from organizations with fewer than 100 employees. References: 1 “Roundup Of Small & Medium Business Cloud Computing Forecasts And Market Estimates, 2015,” Forbes, May 2015. http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2015/05/04/roundup-of-small- medium-business-cloud-computing-forecasts-and-market-estimates-2015/ 2 “SMB Cloud is an IT priority and an IT reality reaching 96 percent adoption in the US,” techaisle, February 2015. http://techaisle.com/blog/184-smb-cloud-is-an-it-priority-and-an-it-reality-reaching- 96-percent-adoption-in-the-us 3 “Cloud computing technology trends in 2015,” TechTarget, December 2014. http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/feature/Cloud-computing-technology-trends-in-2015 4 “ROI of Office 365: Forrester Total Economic Impact Summary,” Forrester, 2015. http://www.slideshare. net/whymsft/roi-of-office-365-forrestroioffice365forrestertotaleconomicimpact 5 “Top 5 uses of cloud computing for 2015,” Thoughts on Cloud, April 2015. http://www.thoughtsoncloud.com/2015/04/top-5-uses-of-cloud-computing-for-2015-2/ 15