Over Half Of European Enterprises Use Public Cloud Platforms

A new Forrester report on the state of the cloud in Europe has found that more than half of European enterprises use one or more public cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure.

Enterprise decision makers no longer see the public cloud as just another way of saving money. According to the study, they view it as a means to give them the agility, flexibility, and capability to pursue their own digital transformation.

Forrester says that Brexit vote has brought about continued uncertainty about how this will affect operators and users of clouds, with the UK's cloud customers continuing to play it safe. The adoption of public cloud platforms in the UK has continued to rise (as it has in rest of Europe). Furthermore, the use of on-premises private clouds, which had been slowing, has risen dramatically from 33% in 2016 to 64% in 2017.

The report also states that companies that are fully prepared for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into force in May, could see a huge business opportunity. Forrester believes that boards and investors will increasingly demand trustworthiness metrics in performance reporting, placing as much weight on a company's responsible approach to its data as on other, more traditional metrics.