A research study conducted by IDC and commissioned by Microsoft, predicts that cloud computing will generate over 2 million jobs in India by 2015. The findings reveal that cloud will generate nearly 14 million new jobs worldwide in the same time. More than 50 percent 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 US$1.1 trillion per year by 2015. Combined with cloud efficiencies, this will drive significant organizational reinvestment and job growth.

“IT/ITES industry has generated jobs in various ways. At one point in the Y2K era mainframes provided jobs for Indian software professionals. Then came the client server computing which fueled the next wave of growth for the Indian service industry. The trend was further accelerated by the BPO sector. Now cloud is going to be the next disruptive job creator for the Indian IT industry. India has emerged as the IT service center of the world. But at the same time it has also become the innovation center of the world,” said Ram Kumar Pichai, General manager- customer and partner experience, Microsoft India.
  
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 US$600 billion in revenue and 1.5 million new jobs.  Further, the spending on public cloud IT services in 2011 stood at US$28 billion, while the total spending on IT products and services was US$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.”

While sharing the findings of the study Floris van Heist, General Manager, Business & Marketing, Microsoft 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 like an unparalleled ecosystem of developers, ISVs and SIs, no legacy IT systems and a high growth rate of economy contributing towards growth of cloud computing.”

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

Infrastructure challenges will help spur investment in private IT cloud services;  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 over 500 employees.