Cloud technology to create workforce

The IDC report was commissioned by the software giant Microsoft and shows that as well as generating jobs, cloud technology will also increase global business revenues by a healthy $1.1trn. The new jobs will be mainly created in Asia, where it is estimated by IDC that over 10 million opportunities will be introduced as a result of cloud technology, with North America due to generate 1.17 million jobs.

Cloud technology is already having a positive global impact on the jobs market. A recent report in The Belfast Telegraph, revealed that the UK’s Jobs and Enterprise Minister, Richard Bruton, has just announced a €1.2m investment into a new cloud computing research centre in Ireland as a result of the government’s ‘Action Plan for Jobs’.

The IDC report explains how cloud technology will promote employment growth throughout both private and public sectors. Though, a recent article in The Wall Street Journal points out that since Microsoft is a leading cloud technology developer with its Azure platform, it is in the company’s interests to predicate a healthy growth in the jobs market. Rob Preston writing in Information Week goes further and suggests that the announcement about new jobs fails to point out that “ advances in IT and other fields permanently destroy some jobs and sends others offshore.”

UK recruitment agencies are already looking at this IT skills shortage and are currently offering training programmes in cloud technology. Other UK companies are looking for software engineers and consultants to work on new cloud technology programmes. One job agency is currently advertising 3,076 vacancies in the sector.

The IDC report claims that 226,000 jobs will be created in the UK, thanks to cloud technology, between 2011-2015. The report also analyses the different global sectors that will benefit from cloud technology and the sectors where the new jobs might be created.  These include 1.4 million jobs in banking, communications and media, 2.4 million and 1.3 million in ‘discreet’ manufacturing industries.

Not all industry insiders are confident that cloud technology will deliver that many new jobs. Some commentators feel that business models are just as important as new technology and that for every new job created many others will go.  The departments where job losses might be experienced will include, purchasing, IT personnel, and a reduction in blue collar roles. One commentator believes that cloud technology will actually cut the global workforce by 10 million; therefore the prospect of new jobs only rises to 4 million, using the IDC figures. It would appear that the jury is still out in the number of jobs that will be created as a result of cloud technology but Forbes suggests that the possibilities of this technology are endless and that companies hosting their own services for their own customers may create future employment.