Brussels, 10/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - Not quite one fifth (19%) of European businesses used cloud computing in 2014, a new Eurostat publication revealed on 9 December. According to the European Union's statistical office, the main reason behind this state of affairs is lack of knowledge. The companies using the “cloud” restrict their use of the services offered because of fear of inadequate protection of their data.
Cloud computing allows companies to access their computing resources hosted by third parties via their own IT infrastructure. Since the services are supplied online by third parties, companies must, of course, have internet access to be able to use them, which was the case in 2014 for almost all EU companies (97%) employing 10 persons or more. The share of firms with internet access was at very similar high levels across member states, so it is not the lack of technical means that prevents firms from using cloud services, rather lack of knowledge of these new services, Eurostat states. Not surprisingly, by far the largest proportion of European businesses using the cloud was recorded in the information and communication sector (45%), followed by the sector covering professional, scientific and technical activities (27%), while the share ranged from 14% to 20% in all other economic sectors. Companies relied on a cloud solution mainly for their e-mail services (66%) and for file storage (53%). Those companies using cloud services reported that the risk of a security breach was the main factor limiting a larger use of the cloud. For the remaining 81% of the enterprises not using the cloud, the insufficient knowledge of cloud computing was considered as the main blocking factor.
The countries whose companies make greatest use of the cloud were the Scandinavian countries and Italy: 51% in Finland, 40% in Italy, 39% in Sweden and 38% in Denmark. At the other end of the spectrum, the cloud was used by less than 10% of firms in Romania (5%), Latvia and Poland (6% each), and Bulgaria, Greece and Hungary (8% each). In 16 member states, the cloud was used mainly for email services, especially in Italy (86%), Croatia (85%) and Slovakia (84%). Eleven member states used the cloud for the storage of files, with the highest proportions being observed in Ireland (74%), the United Kingdom (71%), Denmark and Cyprus (both 70%). Hosting the companies' database was the most common use in the Netherlands (64%). (IL)