What the evidence means
The denominator is businesses that handle digitised data, not all UK businesses. Fieldwork ran from October 2025 to January 2026.
Conditional estimate among businesses handling digitised data.
G&G verified business evidence
Cloud use among UK businesses handling digitised data
In 2025 to 2026, 31% of UK businesses handling digitised data used a public cloud provider to store or process it.
31
percent
Original source
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
UK Business Data Survey 2026
The report records 31% using public cloud services to store or process digitised data.
View original evidence
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. UK Business Data Survey 2026. 18th of June, 2026. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-business-data-survey-2026/uk-business-data-survey-2026
Why this matters to UK SMEs
Public cloud services can give SMEs scalable infrastructure without owning servers, but they also create supplier, access, resilience and data-location decisions. The adoption figure is therefore useful as context, not as a target that every business should follow.
Key breakdowns
Among businesses handling digitised data, 31% used public cloud services, 27% used servers on their own premises, 19% used private cloud and 29% relied entirely on external data centres. Public-cloud use rose from 19% in 2023 to 2024 to 31% in 2025 to 2026. Among businesses storing data off-premises, 20% experienced downtime in the previous 12 months.
How to interpret this evidence
Businesses may use more than one infrastructure model, so the categories should not be added together. Public-cloud use describes where data is stored or processed, not the quality, security or cost effectiveness of the arrangement. Increased use may reflect availability and business needs as well as deliberate digital transformation.
Limitations
The denominator is businesses handling digitised data. Infrastructure use and downtime were self-reported, and the survey does not compare equivalent workloads, providers or contract terms. It does not measure the severity of downtime, cyber incidents, data residency, recovery capability or total ownership cost.
Practical considerations
G&G perspective: choose infrastructure from business requirements rather than adoption statistics. Map critical data and systems, confirm access controls and backup arrangements, understand provider responsibilities and exit terms, test recovery, and decide how much disruption the business can tolerate before committing important operations to a service.