site.btaBulgaria Has Lowest in EU Cloud Computing Use in Enterprises - Eurostat

Bulgaria Has Lowest in EU Cloud Computing Use in Enterprises - Eurostat

Sofia, March 30 (BTA) - In 2016 Bulgaria had the smallest market for cloud computing services in the EU, a Eurostat analysis in cloud computing use in EU enterprises released on Thursday says.

The Eurostat press release says that enterprises can access computing resources hosted by third parties on the internet instead of building their own IT infrastructure. This shared pool of resources is most commonly known as cloud computing. As cloud services are provided online, enterprises must have internet access to be able to use them. In 2016, 97 per cent of EU enterprises employing 10 persons or more had this access. Although the share of firms with internet access was at very similar high levels across Member States, only one in five (21 per cent) used cloud computing services in 2016. Cloud computing most commonly used in the Nordic Member States.

Significant differences can be observed across the EU Member States. More than half of enterprises used cloud computing in Finland (57 per cent), and over 40 per cent in both Sweden (48 per cent) and Denmark (42 per cent). At the opposite end of the scale, cloud computing services were used by less than 10 per cent of enterprises in Bulgaria and Romania (both 7 per cent), Latvia and Poland (both 8 per cent) as well as Greece (9 per cent).

Bulgarian IT experts comment that in 2016 the cloud computing market in this country increased by 14 per cent from the preceding year, but still considerably lagged behind the global market. The growth in 2015 was nearly 35 per cent.