Cloud Jobs And Profits Could Shower The UK – Report

When the cloud rolls in across Europe it will generate 2.4 million jobs and reap over €763 billion (£650 billion) in benefits, according to a report sponsored by EMC Consulting.

The Cloud Dividend Part 2 report covers the five main economies of Europe – UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain – and takes a vertical industries view of the market up to 2015.

Benefits To All Sectors

The distribution, retail and hotel sector stands to benefit the most, the study claims, earning an estimated €233 billion for an expenditure of €60 million on cloud services. It would also generate 354,790 jobs – 39,000 of which would be in the UK.

The benefits for the banking and financial services industry runs some €50,000 behind this at €184 billion, followed by government, education and health with €113 billion. Manufacturing would gain the least  but would still gross €99 billion. The figures are rounded out by a €135 billion generated by all other sectors, including energy and utilities.

Breaking out the predicted UK benefits in local currency renders a profit of £100 billion and the creation of 289,000 jobs. The jobs increase is the lowest for any of the five countries and the financial gains the second lowest, just above Spain. As far as green technology would be concerned, £13 million to £16 million would be saved on power and cooling in the UK.

Adam Thilthorpe, director of professionalism for the British Computer Society said, “The benefits extend to wealth creation and employment opportunities for UKplc. Cloud computing is playing a crucial role in this change which is not limited only to the cutting edge of new companies, but also to how traditional organisations and business models operate.”

Slicing through the European figures, Germany would benefit the most followed by France and Italy. Then, as mentioned above, the UK and Spain.

The report was compiled by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). Oliver Hogan, CEBR’s managing economist said, “One of the key drivers for economic recovery will be job creation and, interestingly, the public sector should gain most here with up to 800,000 positions expected to result from the adoption of cloud services.”

EMC Consulting’s Vice President EMEA, Sandra Hamilton, added, “A critical element in businesses achieving the competitive advantage presented by cloud computing lies in the successful virtualisation of mission-critical and revenue-generating applications. That will be key to realising the full cloud dividend – and to deriving the powerful growth and productivity gains which, as the new report shows, can lead to meaningful job creation across the EMEA region.”

Cloud Computing Middle East and Africa is on 9 March in Dubai