India is the third largest cloud service user in world and is ahead of U.S. The ranking is based on Cisco Connected World Report, a new study commissioned by network equipment vendor Cisco. The study was conducted by the U.S. market-research firm InsightExpress. The countries that lead the list by taking maximum advantage from cloud computing today are Brazil (27 percent) and Germany (27 percent); followed by India (26 percent), U.S. (23 percent) and Mexico (22 percent).

The study assessed how IT managers are evolving their data centers and taking advantage of new technologies, at the same time working to accommodate new trends in the workplace like social media, device proliferation, video and an increasingly mobile workforce. It maintains that globally 52 percent of the IT professionals have stated that they use or plan to use cloud computing. Higher cloud adoption rates are predicted in Brazil (70 percent), China (69 percent) and India (76 percent) in the near future.

The study conducted in 13 countries also revealed that just about 18 percent of respondents are using cloud computing today, while an additional 34 percent plan to use the cloud. Also a large majority (88 percent) of IT respondents expect to store some percentage of their company’s data and applications in private or public clouds in the next three years.