James Bourne| Cloudcomputing
Japan is the highest ranked cloud computing nation worldwide, according to research published by BSA: Software Alliance. In its 2013 BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard, the Alliance aims to “provide a platform for discussion between policymakers and providers of cloud offerings, with a view toward developing an internationally harmonised regime of laws and regulations relevant to cloud computing.”
In other words, the raw figures perhaps are not the be all and end all. But the overall statistics, taking into account such areas as data privacy, security and ICT readiness among others, still make interesting reading.
Japan is the most cloud-oriented nation by some distance according to the study, scoring 84.1 overall. The rest of the top five were very closely matched, with Australia (79.9) and the United States (79.7) ahead of Germany (79.1) and Singapore (78.5), who climbed five places compared to last year’s study.
The remainder of the top 10 comprised France, the United Kingdom, Korea, Canada and Italy; Canada jumped three places from 2012’s results whilst Italy dropped four positions.
Aside from this, the individual scores between countries on cloud pain points proved most interesting. In line with its rise up the league tables, Singapore has the most IT-ready infrastructure globally, with its score of 22.9 edging out the US (22.2) and Korea (21.9).
This ties in with a research infographic from VMware back in November claiming that Singapore and Hong Kong were the most ‘knowledgeable’ about the cloud.
Elsewhere, Korea topped data privacy (9.3) ahead of Japan (8.8) and Canada (8.1), whilst Japan’s score of 8.4 was top of the class for security ahead of the United Kingdom (8.0).
The report also showed various cloud weaknesses by country. Singapore’s lowest score by a distance came in security (3.6) whilst Korea scored poorly on cybercrime (4.8). Japan’s overall success stemmed from the fact that each of its disciplines scored highly.
This research reaffirms Japan’s status as the epicentre for cloud computing development; the country has been ranked the number one cloud ready Asia Pacific nation by ACCA (Asia Cloud Computing Association) for the past two years, saying in the last report that there is “the optimum mix of policies, business and infrastructure to continue and drive growth and adoption of cloud computing”.
There’s no change at the top or bottom, either; the last ACCA report saw Thailand and Vietnam at the bottom of the pile – unsurprisingly, given the markets there aren’t as developed – and the BSA paper sees the two countries propping up the table again, with Vietnam scoring less than half of Japan’s total overall.
Summarising the report, the Alliance asserts that there is an ‘inconsistent’ approach to standards development and that “many ad hoc decisions are made in the absence of national frameworks and policies”.
You can find out the full list here. Which part of these results surprised you and which were you expecting?
