A new study found that 60 percent of UK businesses do not use any type of cloud computing. Furthermore, 20 percent of them "suspect they will sidestep cloud computing all together," according to the report, which was conducted by IDC on behalf of the British hosting provider Fasthosts.

About one in four companies surveyed said a lack of cloud expertise was a primary concern for them.

Contrast this with recent research known as the Cloud Maturity Index conducted by Forrester Research on behalf VMware:

• 64 percent of respondents in Malaysia said they have deployed or are actively planning cloud initiatives

• 32 percent of Thai companies have cloud initiatives in place, and 90 percent of Thai companies said cloud is relevant to their company.

We have to be careful about comparing apples and oranges here - and after all, the IDC numbers imply that 40 percent of UK business do already use cloud computing.

But subjectively speaking, it seems that we can sense a certain enthusiasm in the two Asian countries, limited by the nature of their developing economies, in contrast to a certain lack of enthusiasm in the UK, driven by fear.

My own research shows that the UK is one of the more aggressive developed nations when it comes to IT expenditures, rating just ahead of Malaysia on a relative basis, with poorer Thailand at a lower level. (The United States rates more poorly than the UK and Malaysia, and slightly ahead of Thailand.)

So perhaps things aren't so dire in Britannia after all. What these competing reports, my research, and everyone else's research shows is that technology adoption today is clearly globally synchronous. That is, don't expect the wealthier nations to be the leaders; everyone's discovered that IT matters.

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