Associate Professor Vu Minh Khuong told a conference in Hanoi on June 22 that spending by Vietnamese enterprises grew at an annual average of 64.4% annually, compared with ASEAN’s average figure of 49.5% and the world at 42.5%.

The figures were cited from a survey on cloud applications at more than 500 enterprises in Vietnam.

However, Vietnam’s spending remains low in absolute terms, 107 times lower than Singapore, 6.5 times lower than Malaysia and 2.4 times lower than Thailand.

According to Professor Khuong, these figures suggest that many hurdles remain which are hindering the enhancement of cloud services in Vietnam.

He elaborated that the obstacles do not arise from investment costs but come as a result of the common use of pirated software, lack of knowledge about the benefits of cloud computing and concerns over security and quality of cloud services in Vietnam.

Nguyen Thanh Phuc, Director of the Authority of Information Technology Application, said cloud computing has become one of the most important technologies of the fourth industrial revolution.

He added that besides its advantages, there are also potential risks posed to information security and privacy when data is collected and processed in distributed systems.

The integration of many layers of services with different technologies is also a cause for concern, said Phuc.