Cloud to create 7 mn jobs in SMEs: Microsoft

NEW DELHI, INDIA: A Microsoft commissioned study, conducted by IDC, predicts that cloud computing will generate over 2 million jobs in India by 2015.

The findings predict that cloud will generate nearly 14 million new jobs worldwide in the same time. More than 50 per cent of these jobs will be generated in the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector. Further, more than two million jobs each will be generated in the ‘communications and media’ and manufacturing sectors, followed by banking at over 1.4 million.

Pointing to the strong linkage between cloud, innovation and entrepreneurship, the study estimates that revenues from cloud innovation could reach $1.1 trillion per year by 2015. Combined with cloud efficiencies, this will drive significant organizational reinvestment and job growth.

Cloud computing is already changing how IT delivers economic value to countries, cities, industries, and businesses. IDC estimates that in 2011 alone, IT cloud services helped businesses around the world generate more than $600 billion in revenue and 1.5 million new jobs.

Further, the spending on public cloud IT services in 2011 stood at $28 billion, while the total spending on IT products and services was $1.7 trillion.

The study also indicates that countries investing in key cloud infrastructure will experience greater job growth. The factors determining the number of jobs that might be created in a particular country include projected level of spending on IT, degree of automation, workforce size amongst others.

“For most organizations, cloud computing is a no-brainer when considering it enables massive return on investment and flexibility,” said John F. Gantz, chief research officer and senior vice president at IDC.

“A common misperception is cloud computing is a job eliminator, but in truth it will be a job creator – a major one. And job growth will occur across continents and throughout organizations of all sizes because emerging markets, small cities and small businesses have the same access to cloud benefits as large enterprises or developed nations,” he added.

The latest research confirms India’s unique opportunity to benefit from the cloud with the following key factors favoring cloud-based job creation:

1. Infrastructure challenges will help spur investment in private IT cloud services;

2. In an emerging market, spending on IT cloud services will be subject to less “legacy drag” than in developing regions.

It is also projected that by enterprise size class, jobs will be split down the middle — between companies with 500 or fewer employees and companies with 500 plus employees.