(Susan Hauser, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Enterprise & Partner Group)
Of the 14 million new jobs that the cloud will generate between 2011 and 2015, a roughly equal number will accrue to large and small businesses, according to the IDC study.
Although small businesses make up the majority of employment in most parts of the world, they are generally less computerized. At the same time, IDC expects small- and medium-size businesses to adopt cloud services faster than large companies, many of which are constrained by existing legacy investments. “So when you put it all together, the two trends balance out, and you get a 50-50 split,” says John Gantz, senior vice president at IDC and author of the white paper.
The study found that the number of new jobs produced by cloud computing will be somewhat proportional to the size of each industry, but not entirely. In some industries, such as professional services and retail, the high percentage of small- and medium-size businesses will drive up adoption. In other sectors, such as banking, security issues will slow the move to the public cloud, but may increase adoption of private IT cloud services. Overall, three industries expected to generate the most cloud-related jobs are communications and media (2.4 million), banking (1.4 million), and discrete manufacturing (1.3 million).
The highest percentage of new jobs will occur in emerging markets, according to the study, especially China and India, which together are expected to produce nearly 6.8 million cloud-enabled jobs between 2011 and 2015. This can partly be attributed to the size of their workforces, and partly to the fact that many Chinese and Indian companies aren’t bound by large legacy system investments. “We tend to think of China and India as emerging markets, but they’re actually early adopters of the cloud,” Gantz says. “They’re not bound to existing systems. They’ve skipped that step, so there’s less holding them back.”
Nearly 1.2 million new cloud-related jobs will be created in the U.S. and Canada, according to the IDC study. An early adopter of cloud computing, the U.S. accounted for 62 percent of worldwide spending in public IT cloud services in 2011.
IDC developed its results by analyzing cloud spending trends in more than 40 countries and then using this information to forecast the number of jobs this spending will create.
“Enterprises that embrace cloud computing reduce the amount of IT time and budget devoted to legacy systems and routine upgrades, which then increases the time and budget they have for more innovative projects,” Gantz says. “When IT innovation happens, business innovation is reached, which then supports job creation.”
In a blog post about the study, Robert Youngjohns, president, Microsoft North America, calls the cloud “one of the most profound transformations in computing history.”
“Given the current difficult economic environment, every business is looking to empower their people, reduce costs, improve their customer connections, and create new opportunities through their technology investments,” he writes.
Hauser says Microsoft customers are using the cloud as an opportunity to re-examine their business models for working with customers, vendors, and other stakeholders. By moving to the cloud, for example, one auto sales parts customer has been able to source its parts faster and develop new inventory that will improve the customer experience. Likewise, a large pharmaceutical customer is leveraging the cloud to obtain feedback from think tanks around the world, which it then shares with customers to improve health care. “Again and again, we’re seeing how the cloud is helping our customers save costs and improve the customer experience,” she says.
Ultimately, the cloud will be an important force in helping to restore worldwide economic health, Hauser says. “The cloud is the No. 1 topic among CIOs from around the world,” she says. “They want to know how they can use it to fuel growth. And they want to be sure they have the right people and skills in place to make it happen.”
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