The national policies relating to cloud computing are furthering the stratification of countries, a study by BSA/The Software Alliance says. 

Countries with policy environments conducive to cloud computing are refining their efforts, while those policy environments ranked in the middle group are stagnating, pushing global cloud computing to a split between cloud-friendly and unfriendly markets, according to the “>2016 BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard.

BSA graded each country on 7 key policy areas with statistics and checklists to policy questions such as “is there a breach notification law?” The study found that almost all countries have significantly improved their cloud policy environments since the previous Scorecard was issued in 2013.

The overall order of the rankings is similar to 2013, though South Africa moved up six places to 14th and Canada jumped five to fourth in the ranking of 24 countries representing 80 percent of the global IT market. Japan leads the world in cloud policy environment, according to the study, just ahead of the US and Germany.

“It is promising that Canada has moved up in the rankings, and shows that since 2013 Canada has strengthened its commitment to cloud innovation policies. However, there is still work to be done,” said Victoria Espinel, president and CEO of BSA | The Software Alliance. “Countries around the globe must recognize that their policies affect the global cloud marketplace. The report is a wakeup call for all governments to work together to ensure the benefits of the cloud around the globe.”

Thailand, Brazil, and Vietnam, three of the four countries with the lowest cloud policy scores, have made significant gains, according to the study. All three have reduced the gap between them and the middle tier countries. China’s score, by contrast, fell four spots to the second lowest among countries included, ahead only of Vietnam.

The Scorecard includes summaries of each country’s policy changes since 2013, and case studies detailing how the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership could ease cloud computing, while Russian data localization rules impede its cloud environment.