U.S. cloud computing report slams India, China, Brazil

A U.S. software industry report on Wednesday chided Brazil, China and India for policies it said threatened the future of cloud computing, but also took aim at developed countries such as Germany that did well on its inaugural scorecard.The Business Software Alliance, which represents U.S. industry heavyweights such as Microsoft Corp, said Brazil finished last in its survey of 24 countries, earning only 35.1 points out a possible 100 because of its policies in areas such free trade, security, data privacy and cybercrime.India, which has the world's second-largest software industry after the United States, and China, whose information and communications technology sector is expected to nearly double to $389 billion by 2015, also were in the bottom six, with scores of 50.0 and 47.5, respectively.Cloud computing refers to providing software, storage, computing power and other services to customers from remote data centers over the Web. Demand for cloud-based software is rising rapidly because the approach allows companies to start using new programs faster and at lower cost than traditional products that are installed at a customer's own data center.

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