Use of Cloud solution in Belgium keeps rising

Microsoft is the leading Cloud supplier

The number of Belgian organizations that use cloud solutions continues to rise. Whereas in 2016 an average of 55% of Belgian organizations used one or more SaaS applications, this is 64% now. This is apparent from an analysis by Smart Profile of the cloud market in Belgium in 2018. The number of cloud solutions as a total of the IT applications in use is also increasing in all types of organizations. Microsoft remains the leading cloud supplier in Belgium.

In recent years, the adoption of cloud solutions in Belgium has accelerated. In 2010, only 13% of Belgian organizations used one or more cloud solutions compared to 64% in 2018. This means that an increase of no less than 51 percentage points has taken place in 8 years. The analysis shows that organizations in Flanders use cloud solutions the most: 72% of Flemish companies with more than 50 employees have one or more cloud solutions in house, compared to 58% of organizations in the Brussels-Capital Region and 44 % in Wallonia. Organizations in the last region are clearly engaged in a catch-up race as the percentage of cloud users there was only 29% two years ago.

Penetration of the cloud in the application portfolio

In Flanders, 17% of all solutions are cloud applications. In the Brussels-Capital Region, that share is 13%, while at corporate locations in Wallonia, cloud applications make up nearly 9% of the total. In addition, the Smart Profile analysis makes it clear that cloud applications are relatively the most popular with SMEs: 22% of all applications used within these organizations in Belgium in 2018 are cloud applications. This against 14% at multinationals and 11% at government institutions. However, an increasing trend can be observed in the penetration of cloud solutions in all types of organizations.

For each application listed by Smart Profile, it was asked whether it concerns a solution from the public cloud, a hosted (or private cloud) solution or whether the application runs on premise or within its own organization. A total of 24,600 applications were identified at the 3,446 Belgian business locations interviewed. Some 2,220 locations indicate that they use cloud solutions (more than 64 percent). The total number of listed applications running in the cloud is 3,740 (15 percent of the total).

The share of office applications used in the cloud has risen sharply
Of the 3,740 cloud applications that Belgian organizations use, 36.9% is an Office application in 2018. This was 25.5% last year, and it can be concluded that the share of Office applications within the total number of cloud applications used has increased considerably. Cloud solutions in the field of HR make up almost a quarter of all cloud applications. All other subareas each make up well under 10 percent of the total.

Belgian organizations mostly use, as the terms imply, e-banking and e-learning applications from the cloud. 93.5% and 80.6% respectively of these applications are purchased as a cloud application. In addition, CRM (22.0,%) and Office applications (34.4%) are increasingly purchased via the cloud. Industry-specific solutions (= Vertical) also have an increasing percentage of purchases from the cloud. This includes specific solutions for healthcare institutions, applications for municipalities or educational applications.

Among the suppliers of cloud applications in Belgium, Microsoft is again clearly leading this year: 59.1% of the cloud solutions come from the giant from Redmond (last year this was 42.5%). This is not surprising as Microsoft offers an extensive portfolio of cloud solutions and the use of office applications from the cloud has grown considerably. Microsoft is followed by SDworx, supplier of HR applications and Salesforce with 16.1% and 10% respectively. Google follows remotely with 4.4%.