The article contains the analysis of dynamics of development of the subjects of small and medium businesses in the Russian Federation. Despite the measures of the state policy of Russia in relation to the development of small and medium businesses the reduction in the number and turnover in this sphere is found out. The key factors of successful entrepreneurial activities have been analyzed. The modern methods of increase of efficiency of activities in small and medium businesses have been offered. The possibilities of receiving the state support of businesses, use of the services of business consultants and more traditional methods of management optimization - business planning, optimization of strategy and structure of an organization, receiving supplementary education in the chosen field of activities have been considered. As the most common problem for small business is the limited financial resources, we have focused on finding free or cheap ways of optimization of activities as well as opportunities for reduction of expenses in this work. One of the effective ways of increasing efficiency is the use of the modern information technologies including the cloud services. The comparative analysis of several services, offered in Russia, as well as prospects for their development has been performed. The analysis has revealed that the cloud services are still undiscovered reserves for many Russian and foreign firms
