As the cloud services market grows, it is generating more opportunities for SMB cloud providers. But, at the same time it is becoming more competitive therefore it is essential that the smaller players must develop strategies to successfully compete against the more incumbent figures in this growing industry, says UCStrategies, a supplier of objective information on unified communications.

In fact per a recent UCStrategies study, the larger hosting providers are able to decrease pricing and control the margin, and these are major factors which must be remedied.

According to a CRN report, 50 percent of respondents in a survey noted that cloud war prices were the biggest threat to their business. The specifics of the opportunities afforded to SMB providers must then be considered, particularly when it comes to creating services which provide differentiation and can assist in retaining a provider's position alongside stronger industry players.

While cloud computing has attracted a lot of interest over the last few years, the field has developed to such an extent that cloud technologies are able to offer more robust public, private and hybrid opportunities for testing, development and enterprise applications.

The commoditization of the cloud such as IT-as-a-Service is increasing pressure on hosting providers (particularly SMB hosts) to launch and justify higher margin cloud services to differentiate themselves from the competition. Similarly, offering value-added services which are targeted towards critical business goals like proactive enterprise-class management and support and managed application services is also a wise move, according to UCStrategies.

Additionally, offering a variety of open source and homegrown tools for management and monitoring are also encouraged by the firm as part of competitive strategy. Likewise, automated technology is another investment which must be considered as it will intelligently make any human intervention obsolete.

Another strategy needed to be competitive in the cloud services space is operational efficiency and agility. UCStrategies firmly believes that providers must be flexible enough to adapt to changing demands in real-time.

Want to learn more about cloud computing solutions geared specifically towards small to medium-sized businesses?  Don’t miss the Cloud4SMB Expo, collocated with ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida.  Stay in touch with everything happening at Cloud4SMB Expo. Follow us on Twitter.