Information Economy – Cloud Computing Accelerates Business Processes and Generates Efficiency Gains

More than 37 per cent of all companies engaged in the information economy do already rely on cloud computing. 48 per cent of these cloud users accelerated their business processes and 40 per cent obtained efficiency gains. These are the findings of a survey among companies within the information economy conducted by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, in cooperation with Creditreform, Neuss, in September 2011.

Application Service Providing (ASP), which used to be considered a very ambitious idea a few years ago, never really became accepted, cloud computing broadly entered the business world within a relative short amount of time. At the moment, 37 per cent of the companies engaged in the information economy already rely on cloud computing. On the one hand, this acceptance is very likely due to a better availability of high-capacity internet accesses as well as an increased demand for software, memory space, and computing power. On the other hand, the positive effects generated by the companies’ use of cloud computing further increase the acceptance of cloud computing. “Although uncertainties concerning the assessment of the effects of cloud computing are still broadly existing, a fairly positive image of cloud computing regarding the acceleration of processes and the increase of efficiency seems to be emerging”, says Irene Bertschek, head of the ZEW research department “Information and Communication Technologies”.

Meanwhile, cloud computing does not only accelerate business processes and generate efficiency gains: 41 per cent of the companies state they have increased their IT knowledge through cloud computing. At least 16 per cent of cloud users reduced their energy consumption. However, given the fact that 59 per cent of the companies cannot (yet) evaluate the effect of cloud computing as to the question of energy efficiency, this aspect remains highly uncertain.

Regarding the use of cloud computing, the media sector ranks clearly at the top of the information economy. 45 per cent of all companies within this sector already rely on the cloud, a figure clearly exceeding the 37 per cent that have been determined for the entire information economy. The ICT sector as a whole has a usage rate of 39 per cent, which is slightly above-average. Within the ICT sector, ICT service providers show the most intense use of cloud services: 42 per cent of the ICT service providers make use of cloud services, compared to 26 per cent of the ICT hardware manufacturers. The usage rate of knowledge-intensive service providers, which constitute the third sub-sector of the information economy besides the ICT sector and the media sector, is approximately 36 per cent.

Companies engaged in the information economy use cloud services primarily to access enterprise applications (Software as a Service, SaaS) and infrastructure services (e.g. hosted storage; Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS) via the Internet. The use of developer tools in the cloud (Platform as a Service, PaaS) plays a minor role. While 27 per cent of the companies in the information economy use SaaS or IaaS, the share of companies using PaaS is clearly smaller with approximately 13 per cent. In comparison, the usage rates for SaaS and IaaS of the ICT sector are similar to the figures regarding the entire information economy. Concerning PaaS, however, the usage rate of 21 per cent in the ICT sector clearly exceeds the average rate of the entire economic sector.

The information economy includes the ICT sector with its sub-sectors ICT hardware and ICT services, the media sector, and knowledge-intensive service providers (legal and tax consultancy, accounting, public relations and management consultancy, architecture and engineering services; technical, physical, and chemical analysis, research and development, advertising and market assessment; other freelance, scientific, and technical activities).

For further information please contact

Prof. Dr. Irene Bertschek, Phone +49 621/1235-178, E-mail bertschek@zew.de  

Dr. Jörg Ohnemus, Phone +49 621/1235-354, WE-mail ohnemus@zew.de