The Business Software Alliance and research firm Ipsos Public Affairs published a report about the state of cloud services in the consumer space and within the enterprise. The study polled 15,000 computer users in 33 countries and came up with a few statistics that reiterate the cloud is more than just a passing fad. The second part of the report is the more interesting one however – it’s the portion that BSA members will undoubtedly find much more critical.

BSA and Ispos say that 45 percent of all participants use cloud services such as Google Docs and Dropbox – half the users from emerging markets said they leverage these kinds of offerings, compared with the 35 percent of users from the U.S. and Europe.

“We’re seeing a leapfrog effect. A lot of recent adopters of computers and information technology are jumping straight to the cloud,” said BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman. “If you live in a developing economy and use a computer, then, likely as not, you also use cloud computing services at least some of the time for email, word processing, document or photo storage, or other things — although you might not understand those services to be ‘cloud computing.’

About a third of the people who identified themselves as cloud users use on-demand services for business, while 88 use them recreationally. And – this is the interesting tidbit – 42 percent of those who say they use cloud services say they share their log in info with colleagues. The breakdown is 45 percent in emerging markets and 30 percent in ‘mature economics.’

This is an issue because licenses are often sold on a per seat basis, and multiple users leveraging one account qualifies as license abuse. Definitely something cloud providers, not to mention the enterprises that are using their services, might want to start paying more attention to.