Traditional expenditure on the IT consulting, outsourcing and contractor sectors has also been affected, as subscription-based options typically require 10% to 15% of the fees that on-premise deployments command.

Deciding just which components to include in a cloud implementation plays a crucial role in determining how best the cloud will serve the organization's needs.

Applications with high probability of being migrated from servers to a SaaS model in the near future include payroll/HR, accounting/finance, CRM and business intelligence, data mining and analytics. Research showed 30% of SMBs worldwide would like to purchase cloud services in bundles with certain countries such as China well exceeding the global average.