A move to expand research and development tax relief has been welcomed by cloud computing company Brightsolid.
A change in the R&D tax relief rules will be expanded to include cloud computing and data.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the move in his Autumn budget.
The decision has been welcomed by Brightsolid, a cloud computing specialist with data centres in Aberdeen and Dundee.
Benefits of cloud computing
Chief executive Elaine Maddison said the move could lead to more firms embracing cloud computing.
She said: “Given the huge amounts of data used in many R&D programmes, organisations not using cloud are often at a severe disadvantage compared to those that have embraced the technology.
“Traditional IT systems, especially among SMEs, lack the computing power to cope with large and complex sets of data and the capex cost of upgrading those systems is prohibitively expensive for most organisations.
“Cloud offers a much more cost effective model and almost unlimited power and flexibility.
“It seems the government has recognised this and hopefully the new tax reliefs will lead to more and more organisations feeling they are able to take advantage of all that cloud can offer.”
Investment in innovation
In the budget Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the government will funnel “unprecedented funding” into innovation.
This will involve increasing R&D spending to £20bn a year by the end of this parliament in 2024.
This is lower than a pledge in his March budget to increase spending to £22bn a year.
As a result, R&D spending will rise to 1.1% of GDP, Sunak said. This compares with the OECD average of just 0.7%.