South Africa ranked 20th out of 24 leading IT economies, dropping from 18 only a year earlier.
So says the Business Software Alliance (BSA) in its recent study - 2013 BSA Cloud Computing Scorecard. The 24 countries in the study account for 80% of the global ICT market, the organisation says.
According to BSA, the study is the first to track year-over-year change in the international policy landscape for cloud computing and shows that cloud readiness is improving, be it unevenly.
The alliance explains that these findings come against the backdrop of the massive and well-documented movement to cloud services by consumers, businesses and governments across the globe. It also evaluated national laws and regulations in seven policy areas critical to the development of a globally integrated cloud marketplace.
The study predicts that cloud computing will generate as much as $1.1 trillion in annual revenue by 2015.
According to the report, Australia, Canada, Japan and Korea score well in terms of privacy, as they have comprehensive privacy regimes without any onerous registration requirements. The report also notes that Singapore and China introduced new privacy laws in 2012, and existing laws were revised in Australia and Indonesia. It added that Singapore received a big boost to its score and ranking for introducing a modern, balanced privacy regime.
Unfortunately, the BSA says, privacy reform in several countries has been delayed, with proposals in Brazil, India, SA, Thailand and Turkey failing to gain parliamentary support.
"It is discouraging that South Africa has not made better progress in adopting policies that are conducive to cloud innovation," says Drummond Simpson, chairman of the BSA SA committee. "Every country's policies affect the global cloud marketplace. It is imperative for South Africa to focus on improvements in promoting free trade and data privacy, [and combating] cyber crime and [improving] security in order to improve its standing and help grow the global cloud."
To capture maximum benefit from cloud computing, the BSA advocates a policy blueprint covering each of the seven areas in the study - data privacy, cyber security, cyber crime, intellectual property, technology interoperability and legal harmonisation, free trade, and ICT infrastructure.
"We're seeing patchy progress in the policy landscape for cloud computing," says BSA president and CEO Robert Holleyman.
"Mismatched privacy and security rules are making it hard for data to flow across borders, and too many countries are chopping off pieces of the cloud for themselves. This undercuts economies of scale that would benefit everyone," he adds.
The report also notes a small number of countries have advanced by embracing the legal and regulatory changes needed to take full advantage of the digital economy. These countries have adopted new laws that will improve user confidence in the cloud and allow the countries to exploit the productivity and expanded economic growth that cloud computing enables.
For example, says the BSA, Singapore moved from 10th to fifth place in this year's rankings based largely on the adoption of a new privacy law that balances user protection and continued innovation.
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