Emerging economies over taking mature markets in cloud adoption

People living in emerging economies such as Thailiand, Malaysia, Argentina and Peru are more likely to use cloud services than those in mature economies, new research suggests.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) partnered with Ipsos Public Affairs to carry out the survey, which featured responses from nearly 15,000 computer users in 33 countries.

The results revealed that, on average, 45 per cent of  respondents use some kind of cloud service, but - in emerging markets - this figure rises to 50 per cent. Meanwhile, in the UK, US, Germany and France, this figure falls to an average of 33 percent.

“We’re seeing a leapfrog effect. A lot of recent adopters of computers and information technology are jumping straight to the cloud,” said Robert Holleyman, BSA president and chief executive, in a statement.

“If you live in a developing economy and use a computer, then, likely as not, you also use cloud computing services at least some of the time for email, word processing, document or photo storage.’’

The majority of the world’s self-certified cloud users (88 per cent) said they use online services for personal reasons, while 33 per cent said they use it for business.

Parallels can be drawn between the leap to cloud in emerging economies and the growing use of mobile telephony since the start of the new millenium.

Jeremy George, chief executive  of ForgetMeNot Africa, which provides unified messaging services across the continent, told Cloud Pro: “The rapid growth of the African mobile industry has a clear parallel with the provision of cloud-based services that are hosted at a mobile network operator level.

“Cloud-based services are providing access to internet services that are otherwise difficult or impossible for Africans to use.”