Since the 2000s, cloud computing has enabled companies to move away from all or part of their investments in IT infrastructure in favour of online services (software, storage, computing power, etc.). In the European Union (EU), one in four companies with 10 or more employees use paid cloud services, compared to one in five in France in 2018 – a difference mainly due to companies with fewer than 250 employees.

Paid cloud services vary by company size: smaller companies are more likely to buy accounting software while larger companies tend to focus on customer relationship management solutions. The purchase of computing power in the cloud, which can be easily increased or decreased, is conducive to a new practice: big data analytics. In France, 16% of companies with 10 employees or more perform big data analysis, compared to 12% across the EU as a whole. In France, companies providing big data analysis services make greater use of data from mobile device geolocation than on average across the EU as a whole.