The cloud has become one of the pillars of digital transformation, yet its adoption in Spain continues to progress at two different paces. While major companies are already operating smoothly in cloud environments, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) remain far behind. According to the Cloud Nation 2025 report by Aire, companies with more than 250 employees account for 96% of total public cloud activity in Spain, compared to just a 4% share attributed to the rest of the business fabric. At the same time, 73% of large organizations have already integrated cloud computing into their technology stack.
This data does not mean that only 4% of SMEs use some cloud service, but rather that their actual share in public cloud activity remains minimal compared to large corporations. This gap is also reflected in revenue: Aire states that 92% of cloud business in Spain comes from companies with revenues exceeding €40 million, indicating that public cloud adoption is far more ingrained in organizations with greater financial, technical, and operational strength.
The clear consequence is that, despite the cloud being touted for years as an equalizer of opportunities, the Spanish reality shows that a large part of medium and small businesses still depend on traditional infrastructures. The report itself notes that 50% of companies still using traditional data centers keep more than 75% of their workloads there, limiting agility, automation, and rapid scaling. This same persistence is also confirmed in AUTELSI’s report on connectivity and cloud solution adoption, which highlights that many organizations continue to rely on traditional data centers and are slow to reduce this dependence.
The barrier is not just money
A particularly interesting aspect of the analysis is that the slowdown is not solely due to budget constraints. Aire identifies several technical and management barriers that help explain why so many SMEs struggle to scale in the cloud. The main obstacle is the complexity of assessing migration feasibility and application dependencies, cited by 61.3% of the companies analyzed. Next is the lack of technical training to interpret cost structures and billing, mentioned by 46.8%, and security and compliance challenges, affecting 41.9%.
Less visible factors also play an important role. 35.5% of organizations point to cultural resistance to change as a real obstacle, while 33.9% remain tied to on-premises infrastructures that are still being amortized. Practically, this means many companies lack resources for migration, and also carry legacy decisions that make it difficult to justify shifting to hybrid or cloud-native models.
Paradoxically, the theoretical advantages of the cloud are widely recognized. Aire reports that 79% of professionals value elasticity and pay-as-you-go pricing as the main benefits, while among those already migrated, 73.3% use on-demand computing capacity, 58.3% employ cloud storage, and 55% utilize analytics services. Even advanced cybersecurity features are gaining traction, with 51.7% leveraging IAM (Identity and Access Management) and access controls. The issue is not a lack of attractiveness in the model but rather the difficulty of turning it into an operational reality for smaller companies.
Connectivity is starting to weigh as much as the cloud itself
Built into this structural delay is another crucial element influencing the success of any cloud strategy: network connectivity. Aire’s research shows that 50% of Spanish companies already use dedicated links to protect cloud services and improve stability and latency, while another 50% rely on VPNs for remote access. The company also states that 75% of IT managers identify network management as their main concern, and that 50% consider security a secondary priority behind operational complexity.
While these figures originate from Aire’s published material, AUTELSI’s June 2024 report supports the broader trend: solutions involving dedicated links and access via neutral points are among the most common connection methods to public clouds in large environments. For end users, it is still common to access cloud applications through unencrypted traffic, especially in SaaS and collaboration tools. The AUTELSI report also highlights that the main connectivity concerns are management and security.
This is an important point because it corrects a widespread misconception: the challenge is no longer just choosing between providers like AWS, Azure, or others, but ensuring secure, stable, and sufficiently visible access. Aire further notes that 33% of companies admit to browsing unencrypted when accessing SaaS applications, and 25% already use neutral data centers to interconnect with multiple cloud and telecom providers. These figures should be read as part of the company’s commercial report data but align with AUTELSI’s insights on the growing importance of hyperconnectivity and neutral points in hybrid and multi-cloud architectures.
Three regions drive the market, but the country remains fragmented
The cloud gap also has a geographic dimension. Aire estimates that the national adoption average is 31.65%, but only Catalonia (44%), Madrid (38.4%), and Basque Country (32.37%) surpass this threshold. This regional concentration reinforces the idea that cloud deployment in Spain still heavily depends on more mature, well-connected business ecosystems with better access to technical talent.
Taken as a whole, the message is uncomfortable but quite clear. Spain does not suffer from a lack of awareness about cloud computing but from a matter of real asymmetry in adoption. Large companies are already leveraging elasticity, automation, and demand-driven infrastructure. Many SMEs, on the other hand, remain caught between legacy systems, lack of expertise, regulatory uncertainties, and connectivity issues that are not always supportive. If this gap is not addressed, the cloud will cease to be a leveling force and will instead become another factor of technological concentration.