Just as Britain's cloudy skies are dominated by weather fronts that push in from the Atlantic, so the country's cloud services are largely dominated by US technology companies. Some are in the UK in name only; many businesses including Amazon, which has led the charge for the cloud with its suite of self-serve systems, have chosen Ireland, with its attractive tax incentives, as their base of operations. But not all of them are looking from the outside in.
In fact, Britain's cloud industry has never been more vibrant or exciting – with rapid progress at almost every level.
In terms of research, a great deal of work on developing new cloud technologies takes place in the UK, both in private labs and alongside public institutions. Companies such as IBM, Microsoft and HP are choosing to link up with academic institutions, often working in conjunction with universities such as Cambridge and Bristol. Florida-based cloud provider Citrix, meanwhile, has three major research centres set up across south and eastern England to develop its Opencloud service.
It is not just US giants that have made their move into Britain: European companies such as French firm Talend, suppliers of data management services in the cloud, have also targeted the UK.
But while the business of providing core cloud infrastructure is dominated by foreign companies, there is still plenty of homegrown talent making waves. British leaders such as London e-commerce provider Venda has a list of clients which include Tesco and Universal Music. The business has proved so successful that it has expanded beyond the UK with offices in New York and Bangkok.
For some, buying British is not simply a case of supporting local businesses. Given that the whole point of the cloud is to outsource your IT infrastructure, going local might sound counter-intuitive. But in fact it can be massively important. If your data is stored by British companies in British data centres, there are fewer concerns about regulation and compliance. Buy British and companies can be sure, for example, that their information will not be subject to laws in different jurisdictions.
The biggest local innovations, however, appear to be happening at service level. Large British software companies such as Sage have launched cloud products, and a network of suppliers such as Stockton's Onyx, which specialises in systems, applications and products in the cloud, have also emerged.
In fact, the number of businesses selling software as a service has grown so rapidly that they are now forced to look for new ways to stand out from the crowd. Stephen Holford is marketing director of cloud service provider Rise, Microsoft's global hosting partner of 2011, and says: "The cloud is more about business transformation than technology. It is challenging the traditional IT supply chain to the extent that customers are evolving a hybrid model combining on-premise and cloud capabilities to meet their own unique needs."
Among those taking a more individual approach is Manchester-based Outsourcery, which specialises in providing cloud services and unified communications. The company has chosen to focus on its green credentials: data centres are well known as power-hungry places – Google, for example, recently made headlines by revealing that its worldwide network of server farms had an energy footprint of 260 megawatts, the equivalent of a sizeable coal-fired power plant. To help customers who take their environmental responsibilities seriously, Outsourcery offsets much of its carbon emissions.
But while the UK has plenty of activity, the shape of the market is still a long way from being straightforward. The adoption of the cloud is unevenly distributed, and many businesses have yet to understand the benefits that it can bring to them.
For example, a survey conducted by VMware earlier this year suggested that only 48% of small and medium-sized British companies had started using some form of cloud computing – compared with an average of 60% across Europe.
Falling behind
Some suggest that this could be turned around with better support from the top. The British government, one of the country's most voracious IT consumers, has said it will switch many of its internal services to the cloud – but development of the so-called "G-Cloud" has been criticised in some quarters.
According to Salesforce boss Marc Benioff, one of the most enthusiastic advocates for cloud services over the past few years, Downing Street should be making more of an effort to use public cloud infrastructure, rather than its current position of trying to build its own solution.
"The UK government needs to get aggressive about cloud services," said Beniroff at a recent conference in London. "The UK is way behind in this."
Salesforce is not exactly a disinterested party: it is due to open its first data centre in Britain next year, and has plenty of products that it would dearly love to sell to the coalition government. But Benioff's words are also a challenge to the rest of Britain's cloud industry: perhaps it's time to step up and make the most of the innovation that is already here.
