It has been reported this week that 65% of US small to medium sized businesses (SMEs) say that cloud computing is absolutely essential to their organisation and future growth plans. Meanwhile 59% have stated that their selection of cloud service providers is largely impacted by their privacy policies.

This was revealed via research that was carried out by Microsoft Corporation.

The study also uncovered the fact that SMEs have been attracted to the cloud due to the opportunity for improving efficiency that cloud computing naturally presents. Cloud computing will also drive down costs. However, the main concern is still regarding privacy and security.

It has been revealed that the cloud policies and practices that SMEs seem to be most concerned about are transparency about location of data, segregation of data between customers and commitments not to mine cloud data for advertising.

The chief privacy officer at Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, Brendon …