Gartner says Europe’s a bit cold on the cloud

Diversity and Eurocrisis could make adoption rates slower than US It may be good for a holiday but Europe’s diversity is not so good for cloud services, with Gartner saying it could contribute to making Europe one of the slower regions to respond to the Cloud. And contrary to popular belief – the Eurocrisis also won’t help adoption rates either. A number of industry players have said in the past they believe dried-up IT budgets will force a move to the Cloud, but Gartner said this may no longer be the case. Gartner VP Paolo Malinverno said Gartner has identified four main inhibitors for cloud adoption in Europe over coming years: the diversity of data privacy regulations; complexity of cross-country business processes; EU policy and regulation – of delays of; and lack of investment. "The opportunities for cloud computing value are valid all over the world, and the same is true for some of the risks and costs," Malinverno says. "However, some of cloud computing’s potential risks and costs — namely security, transparency and integration — which are generally applicable worldwide, take on a different meaning in Europe.” This does not mean interest in the cloud is waning in Europe. Gartner VP and Gartner Fellow David Mitchell Smith said these factors won’t stop cloud adoption across the continent, but they will slow it down. “The potential benefits of cloud are too attractive and the interest in its efficiency and agility are too strong to stall it for long,” Smith said. One of the biggest inhibitors will be data privacy regulations, based around nationalistic cloud agendas, but Gartner said many countries are now working to overcome these. The incompatibility of regulation and business practices across European countries is another concern along with the pace of formation of EU policies around the Cloud. Gartner said it expects to the see the EU tackle cloud policy in future, which could lead to further delays in cloud adoption. Many projects at this stage may, however, already be on hold with companies becoming less reluctant to make game-changing decisions.