Almost half (44%) of UK FTSE 100 companies are using Google's cloud-based Apps, Search, Maps or Cloud Platform, the search giant has announced.
The figure was unveiled by Shailesh Rao, Director of Google Enterprise at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo, who said that the figure suggests that European businesses are moving to the cloud "sooner than many had expected".
Though Google didn't provide an individual breakdown of how many businesses are using the four services, Roger De'Ath, Google Enterprise Manager UK, told TRPro that its Apps platform is seeing "real customer momentum" among larger enterprises.
Wider adoption
He said: "We're seeing adoption in the SMB space with 5 million customers across the board, so we thought this was a good checkpoint to say that it's actually not just small businesses - it's larger enterprises using Apps too."
De'Ath called the UK is a "good bellwether" in regards to wider Apps adoption, adding: "The US is the lead market followed by key markets in EMEA. The UK is the biggest there, so our expectation is that's a good sign of things to come in terms of wider adoption in international markets."
Office expansion
Google has undertaken several initiatives recently to boost the popularity of Apps among businesses, one of those being the acquisition of Quick Office, a free Android and iOS app that lets users edit Microsoft Office documents on the go before saving them to Google Drive.
De'Ath said that the company would bring Quick Office to another platform, such as Windows Phone or BlackBerry OS, if it achieved "significant" market share.
He said: "Quick Office has been an important acquisition for us in terms of rollouts to mobile platforms. In general we base any decision on overall demand - not just QuickOffice - but any of our services.
"If any new operating system suddenly got a reasonable amount of market share we would have to support that. Our vision is working on all devices anywhere any time, so in a way we're driven by broader adoption, but clearly our focus is on Android."
