The Shift to Cloud Solutions Gains Momentum

In the fairy tale "How I Went to Woo the Daughter of the North" by Kārlis Skalbe, it was once written that in the north, the sky is so low that it can be reached by hand. Therefore, the locals kept a spoon in the clouds above the table, which they conveniently took before eating.

Clouds are evidently very close and familiar to northerners, as they are also far ahead of others in using cloud services. In the latest Eurostat review of cloud solution usage in European Union (EU) companies, it was found that Finnish entrepreneurs are the most active in adopting new opportunities. In 2023, 78.3% of companies there used cloud-based programs and data storage, compared to an EU average of 45.2%. Sweden ranked second with 71.6%, followed by Denmark with 69.5%.

Half of Companies in the Cloud

In the Nordic business environment, cloud services were embraced even before the pandemic, and at the beginning of this decade, at least two-thirds of firms were already using them. Therefore, northerners are well-acquainted with life without their own servers or programs installed on computers. But what about the rest?

Other member states are also purposefully moving toward cloud solutions. Numerous positive examples of ease of use, increasingly diverse and high-quality offerings, and growing confidence that company data is safer in high-level data centers than in their own server rooms foster trust in "clouds." This is also reflected in statistics. Since 2021, the proportion of EU companies using cloud services has increased by 4.2 percentage points—from 41% to 45.2%.

Rapid Growth

Even faster growth is occurring in Latvia. The "turbo digitalization" observed during the pandemic years is now reflected in official data. From 28.5% cloud service users in 2021, we have reached 35.8% in 2023, clearly demonstrating that we are making rapid progress. Only Poland, Hungary, and Malta have experienced faster breakthroughs. However, it must be noted that even after this impressive leap, we are still near the bottom of the list, ranking seventh from the end. Slightly more than a third of all companies in Latvia use cloud services, while the EU average is almost half.

Nevertheless, even from these facts, we can "extract" positive trends. Both Eurostat and our own "Digital Leader Portrait" survey data confirm that Latvian company leaders understand the advantages of cloud services and strive to utilize them. The change in attitude is also evident in the usage of our accounting and business management system Jumis Pro. Two-thirds of all clients have already chosen it as a cloud solution, and among new clients, interest in the computer-installed version is minimal.

We have observed that the larger the company, the higher the interest in the cloud-based form of the accounting system. Last year's compiled statistics show that all Jumis Pro clients employing over 250 people use the accounting system as a cloud service, 85.7% of companies with 50 to 249 employees have chosen it, and 72.4% in the 10-49 employee group. In small companies with up to nine employees, 62.5% of clients use it. The most active cloud service users are companies in the trade, real estate, agriculture, and outsourced accounting service sectors.

Convenience Convinces

Companies prefer the "cloud" version because they know it will always have the latest updates, the highest data security, and compliance with current legislative requirements. Users won't have to worry about technical issues or miss updates, as the service provider takes care of everything, including creating backups for the data.

However, these are not the only advantages. Among private users, cloud solutions became very popular due to their convenient accessibility. Namely, one can access their storage "in the cloud" from any device by entering a username and password. Even if a work computer is not at hand, data can be viewed from a smartphone. Moreover, many service providers now offer access through user-friendly mobile apps.

These benefits are also appreciated by companies, which is why the number of cloud service users is growing. We can now confidently say that the process is irreversible, and it's only a matter of time before programs installed on computers join such once-essential but now merely great historical artifacts as CD readers, USB flash drives, or monitor-mounted protective filters.