‘Small Business IT is Moving to the Cloud’ is quoted on the aspiring cloud software company Parallels’ homepage, and this Moto was the emphasis of the Parallels 2010 summit which took place in Miami earlier this week.

Parallels, perhaps mostly known for their Parallel Desktop software that allows Mac users to run Windows in a virtual machine, predicts that the Small Business sector is to become a “hub of cloud computing deployment” within the next 5 years.

Considering that 40% of all I.T spend is already attributable to small businesses and that, as a recent Goldman Sachs study revealed, 60% of small and medium enterprises always consider cloud computing/software as a service (SaaS) when purchasing applications – this is hardly a startling prediction, especially with the cloud trend becoming increasingly popular. Moreover, according to a recent Forrester report, about one third of all enterprises have already subscribed to software as a service applications, or plan to do so within the next year – triggered not just by the recession but more so by an increase in businesses’ trust in the security and worthiness of the initially suspicious-seeming cloud computing concept.

Parallels aims to become the leader in software that web hosting companies will use to provide services (in the cloud) to small businesses. Specialized I.T services have so far been prevalent mostly in large companies because of their complexity and high costs.

However, a key issue in Parallels reaching their goal depends on whether small businesses will buy cloud computing software from hosting companies within Parallels’ client range such as Go Daddy, or whether they will opt for software through giants like Microsoft, Google and Salesforce.

To this question, Go Daddy President and Chief Operating Officer Warren Adelman said “This market is big enough that it can support many players. It’s up to Go Daddy and its competitors to make their services the simplest to use and the least worrisome for users.”

IDC predicts that the cloud services market will hit $44.2 billion by 2013.

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