Nearly half of all businesses in a Bermuda government survey indicated they are using cloud services.

The Information and Communication Technology Profile for 2017, released today, was generated through using data from a sample of 1,500 businesses with a response rate of 88.2 per cent.

Some 48.6 per cent of those surveyed said they used cloud services, a jump of 7.5 percentage points from the 2016 survey.

Cloud services are supplied to customers via the internet through the use of a cloud computing company’s servers, as opposed to the customer’s own servers.

Such services include online data storage and back-up solutions, managed technical support services, web-based e-mail services, hosted office suites and document collaboration services.

In all, 48.9 per cent of respondents in the survey said they outsourced ICT needs, with 36.6 per cent using local service providers only and 5.5 per cent outsourcing to overseas businesses, while 6.8 per cent outsourced to a combination of local and overseas service providers.

The survey found that the ICT sector contributed $228 million, or 3.6 per cent, to Bermuda’s gross domestic product.

Capital investment in the sector climbed by 17.3 per cent to $95 million last year.

The number of ICT-related jobs fell by 3 per cent to 895, approximately 2.1 per cent of Bermuda’s total filled jobs. But the number of IT professionals employed rose by 1.8 per cent to 464.

The gross median income for ICT-related jobs fell by 7.4 per cent to $82,180 in 2017.

• See the full report on this webpage under the heading, Related Media