Cloud computing held back by slow broadband
March 5, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Slow broadband speeds across the UK are preventing SMEs (small to medium enterprises) from taking full advantage of new technologies including cloud computing.
This is according to Matt Yardley, a partner in Analysys Mason. He was speaking at the Westminster eForum Keynote Seminar about cloud computing, and said that faster speeds were essential for businesses if they were to take advantage of such on-demand services.
Cloud computing is the new way of using software on the internet. Whereas before, users had to download software to their individual computers in order to use it, now many things are provided on the ‘cloud’ of the internet. For example, Google Documents is a service that allows users to use and store spreadsheets and word processor documents online without downloading any software.
The benefits are enormous, especially when it comes to improving efficiency for businesses. This is important at the moment because many businesses are trying to fight their way out of the recession, and anything that improves efficiency is a huge plus. But slow broadband speeds are proving a barrier to the uptake of such new technologies.
Yardley suggested that, unless things improved quickly, it could be a decade before the right broadband speeds come along to make cloud computing a reality.
This comes just weeks after BT announced the unrolling of its own super-fast fibre-optic broadband service across some parts of the country. This is a step in the right direction but, as Yardley stated, “It’s a long, long way off until we have full availability, ubiquitous coverage of those networks, particularly if we think about both fixed and mobile networks."
It remains to be seen just how long it will take to reach the broadband speeds required, and how much the inability to adopt cloud computing will impact the economy.
