Every fifth company in the EU28 uses cloud services. According to the latest Eurostat figures, Finnish companies take the lead here. There, 51 percent of companies use cloud computing. This is followed at a considerable distance by Italy (40 percent), Sweden (39 percent) and Denmark (38 percent).
Lagging behind with the lowest percentages are Bulgaria, Greece and Hungary (each at 8 percent), Latvia and Poland (each at 6 percent), and Romania (5 percent). Germany and France, too, occupy the bottom third of the table with percentages of 11 percent and 12 percent respectively. The prerequisites for the use of cloud services are there in principle: 97 percent of companies in the EU28 with ten or more employees have Internet access. What holds companies back from using cloud computing is clearly related to individual experience: organisations that already use these services cite security risks as the reason for not using them more, while companies that use no cloud services state that a lack of knowledge about the technology is their main hindrance.
The overall most popular cloud service revolves around email (66 percent). This kind of use dominates in 16 of the member states, most notably in Italy (86 percent), Croatia (85 percent) and Slovakia (84 percent). In eleven other member states, for businesses it is primarily about storing data; frontrunners here are Ireland (74 percent), Great Britain (71 percent), Denmark and Cyprus (each at 70 percent), while companies in the Netherlands most frequently cited database operation (64 percent). (resource: Eurostat/sp)