Do you spend so much maintaining legacy IT operations that you can’t think about doing anything new? Well, think again: Reallocating part of your IT budget to cloud computing could liberate 35% to 50% of what you spend on legacy operations.  

According to Gartner, Inc., a highly respected IT research firm, the “average” IT organization devotes almost two-thirds of its budget to day-to-day operations. Here’s another “average” from Gartner: In 2011, IT budgets will increase 1%.

In my experience, plenty of organizations spend even more than two-thirds of their IT budget on getting by day-to-day — and plenty won’t see their IT budgets pointing upward anytime soon. 

That adds up to a big problem, because any business that can’t find a way to take advantage of newly emerging information technology capabilities may not be able to remain competitive. 

However, an unprecedented opportunity lurks here, too. It’s called cloud computing, and it’s the great equalizer. Thanks to cloud computing, small and mid-size businesses can field IT capabilities and applications as leading-edge and profitable as any in the world, and they can become as cost-efficient and competitive as the largest companies.