Cloud usage in Greece has doubled in five years

Greek companies have been making digital leaps in recent years, a fact that is certified, according to the Association of Greek IT & Communications Enterprises (SEPE), by the increase in the use of cloud computing by the domestic business world. In our country, within a five-year period (2017-2021), the percentage of companies that have integrated the cloud in their daily lives has doubled: from 11% in 2017, the companies that use the cloud now represent 22% of the total.

The percentage of Greek companies that use cloud computing, reached 22% in 2021 from 11% in 2017. The course of approach of Greek companies to the cloud is steadily accelerating, since in 2014 only 8% of Greek companies used the cloud . This percentage remained almost stable in the two years 2015-2016 (8% and 9% respectively).

In 2018, the companies in Greece, which used cloud services, represented 13%, a percentage that increased to 17% during the first pandemic year in 2020. However, despite the steady improvement of the integration of the cloud in the Greek business, Greece remains tail of Europe in cloud adoption.

The percentage of 22% for Greece may represent a doubling of the penetration of the cloud in Greek companies, however, it is an indicator that places the country only in the third, from the end, position of the European ranking. It is almost half of the corresponding EU-27 average, which for 2021 reaches 42%.

Only companies in Romania and Bulgaria have worse performance than Greece, where only 13% and 14% of companies, respectively, use cloud technology.

Sweden and Finland are champs

In contrast, Sweden and Finland are the EU-27 member states with the highest percentage of business cloud computing usage. In both countries, three-quarters of companies (75%) now use the cloud in their day-to-day operations.

Businesses in the Netherlands and Denmark also have an excellent performance in the adoption of the cloud, where the corresponding percentage for 2021 reaches 65%. Overall, according to Eurostat data, in 2021 42% of European businesses – on average – used the cloud. This is an increase of 6 percentage points compared to 2020 (36%), while the percentage is more than double compared to 2016 (19%).

Thanks to the cloud, businesses can access computing resources hosted by third parties on the Internet instead of building their own IT infrastructure.

Why they use the cloud

European companies use cloud computing mainly for e-mail and storage purposes. Of the companies that reported using the cloud, the vast majority (79%) chose a solution for hosting email systems.

Meanwhile, according to Eurostat data, about two-thirds used the cloud for file storage (68%) and for office software such as word processors and spreadsheets (61%). More than half of the companies used cloud technology for security software (59%).

There are also a number of European companies, which have entered the world of cloud, to access more advanced end-user software applications, such as finance / accounting (48%), customer relationship management (27%) and business resource planning (24 %).