A Microsoft-commissioned study, conducted by IDC, predicts that cloud computing will generate over two million jobs in India and nearly 14 million new jobs worldwide by 2015. More than 50 per cent of these jobs will be generated in the small and medium businesses.
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 a year by 2015.
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Combined with cloud efficiencies, this will drive significant organisational 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.
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.
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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 and workforce size.
“For most organisations, 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 organisations of all sizes because emerging markets, small cities and small businesses have the same access to cloud benefits as large enterprises or developed nations.” While sharing the findings of the study, Floris van Heist, General Manager, Business & Marketing, Microsoft Corporation India, said, “Cloud computing poses a compelling opportunity for businesses and governments around the world. India is uniquely poised to leverage this opportunity with factors such as an unparalleled ecosystem of developers, ISVs (independent software vendor) and SIs (systems integrators), no legacy IT systems and a high growth rate of economy contributing towards the growth of cloud computing.”
Microsoft offers comprehensive services across all three service layers of the cloud, namely, infrastructure, platform and software as services.
With all of Microsoft's key products having a cloud offering, it is uniquely positioned to provide unmatched flexibility — from a complete on-premise solution to one completely in the cloud to any mix of the two in-between.
The latest research confirms India's unique opportunity to benefit from the cloud with the key factors favouring cloud-based job creation.