Fifty three per cent of companies in Malta made use of cloud computing in 2020, Eurostat statistics show.

This statistic is far higher than 2016, where only 35% of companies in Malta made use of such services.

Enterprises can access computing resources hosted by third parties on the internet instead of building their own IT infrastructure. This pool of resources is most commonly known as ‘cloud computing’. As cloud services are provided online, enterprises must have internet access to be able to use them. In 2020, 98% of EU enterprises employing 10 persons or more had this access,” Eurostat said.

Despite this high level of internet access, the use of cloud computing in the EU stood at 36% in 2020. This share almost doubled compared with 2016 (19%). This shows that companies in Malta are more willing to make use of such resources.

Although the share of firms with internet access was at very similar high levels across EU Member States, the use of cloud computing varied significantly, with the highest shares reported in Finland (75%), Sweden (70%) and Denmark (67%) in 2020.

At the opposite end of the scale, cloud computing services were used by fewer than one in five enterprises in Bulgaria (11%), Romania (16%) and Greece (17%).

Of the enterprises that reported using cloud computing in the EU, a vast majority (76%) opted for a cloud solution to host their e-mail systems. About two-thirds (67%) used the cloud for storing files, 58% used it for office software (such as word processors and spreadsheets) and 47% to host their databases.