Long-term Prosperity – Business leaders get their heads in the cloud
07 March 2012
The global financial crisis has challenged many businesses across the region, both large and small. In the fight to get Europe back to broader economic health, technology may not solve all of the problems but it does have a major role to play. By freeing up investments made to maintain technology infrastructure, businesses can instead focus on core operations and their talent. A new Microsoft-commissioned IDC study suggests that migration towards cloud computing will help many companies do just that.
The research found that wide-spread adoption of cloud computing could create up to 14 million new jobs worldwide by the end of 2015 – with more than 1.2 million of these expected in Europe. These figures take into account the fact that cloud efficiencies may free up some existing resources allocated for IT maintenance, so we’re talking about actual net job gains here. Countries expected to benefit most include Germany, with around 255,000 new jobs predicted, the UK (227,000) and France (189,000). Russia and Italy are also forecast to see increases of over 150,000 each.
As companies become more efficient, and are able to invest in people-power – sales, finance, product and marketing – IDC predicts increased revenue of $1.1 trillion a year globally by 2015.
So, how exactly does the cloud allow businesses to improve efficiencies? The communications and media sector, for example, can now more easily deploy the services it needs to meet storage demands on behalf of its customers. Banking will see increasing investment in private IT cloud services, while small businesses in the manufacturing sector will use the cloud to simplify software management while improving service levels and reducing customer costs. And across business sectors, the cloud also supports job creation by freeing organisations up from maintaining legacy systems and allowing investment in more innovative IT.
We’re seeing our own customers recognising these benefits and capitalizing on the business advantages afforded by cloud adoption. In fact, to support the rapidly swelling demand, we’ve just announced a $130 million investment to increase the capacity of our Dublin data centre, which powers our cloud customers in Europe. We’ve also got a great resource available in terms of our Brussels-based European Cloud & Interoperability Centre, which aims to show businesses how they can drive innovation and growth across Europe through cloud applications.
We work closely with customers, including some SMBs that have that have used the cloud to gain notable competitive advantage. For example:
To be clear, the cloud won’t necessarily help every company – particularly those that lack vision, creativity and tenacity. But for organizations that look to the future, and believe in the power of people, the cloud is emerging as an invaluable asset.
This is a cross-post from the Microsoft EMEA Press Centre. You can find the original article here.
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