UK leads the world in cloud development, according to Westminster City CIO

A UK government official recently touted the country's cloud developments, declaring he believes it holds the top cloud environment in the world.

David Wilde, Westminster City CIO, recently told Computing.co.uk that the progress he has seen in the UK has been far greater than expected, propelling the cloud in the UK past that in the United States.

"Over the last three years the UK government has embraced the cloud, this combined with a challenging cloud debate fostered by the press and the conference circuit has meant that the private sector has responded with solutions to the challenges faced by end-users," Wilde told the news provider. "For example, in the U.S. there is a lot of talk about the cloud, but it hasn't been picked up by the media in the same way, and so there hasn't been the same pressure on suppliers to respond to concerns."

One area in which the UK has reacted to both government and industry scrutiny is cloud security. Before the UK government, which has long been a stickler for information security, was going to trust the cloud for managing public sector and private sector information, vendors in the country had to prove security was adequate.

With similar scrutiny beginning to take shape in the U.S., major vendors have begun to develop new security standards and reach more customers.