India ranks 20th out of 24 leading IT economies, compared to its ranking of 18th in 2016, a sign that the legal and regulatory environment for cloud computing in India is restricting cloud innovation.
Germany tops the chart, followed by Japan and US.
The 2018 BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard features an updated methodology that better reflects the policies that have helped cloud computing’s exponential growth over the past five years, putting additional emphasis on countries’ privacy and cybersecurity laws and broadband infrastructure.
The Scorecard — that ranks countries’ preparedness for the adoption and growth of Cloud computing services — is a tool that can help countries constructively self-evaluate their policies and determine the next steps to increase adoption of the technology.
A small group of countries scored close to the maximum points — Canada, Germany, the United States, Poland, and Japan — while a number of countries score no points or almost no points, including China, India, Vietnam, and Russia.
There is a gap in trade secrets protection in India. In addition, guidance for examiners on how to evaluate patent applications for software-enabled inventions is lacking, although the revocation of guidelines that would have prevented most computer related inventions from being subject to patent protection if novel hardware was not present is a step in the right direction. Furthermore, India still has not ratified the WIPO Copyright Treaty.
Overall, India’s ranking in 2018 is 20th. India fell two places because of its poor results in the Data Privacy and IT Readiness and Broadband Deployment.
