Widespread adoption of cloud computing could give the top five EU economies a trillion dollar, or £645bn boost over five years, a report from an independent economic think tank has claimed.
The group, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said such a move could also create as many as 2.4m extra jobs in the key economies of the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain - as well as giving a combined economic top-up of just under EU177bn each per year.
The report was commissioned by EMC and claims rapid uptake of "Cloud computing service offerings [will make them] progressively cheaper as economies of scale take hold and service offerings increasingly mature".
The savings would be accrued at the level of macro-economic business variables, such as business development opportunities; business creation; indirect gross value added (GVA); tax contributions and “expenditure on Cloud services”.
The study's headline figures are based on a highly complex methodology and numerous assumptions, but is all said to be based on publicly available data and is a reasonable attempt at a set of reliable predictions.
According to the analysis, the biggest Cloud winners could be Germany, followed by the UK, with such national economies benefiting from Cloud allowing its domestic companies to invest in growth while spreading the cost. Instead of a big up-front costs, IT investment becomes a continuing operating expenditure that rises and falls with demand, is just one feature, says the report's authors.
On that basis, the UK could, like its Western European peers, via things like using more private and hybrid Clouds and so forth, be 'better off' to the value of EU30bn (£25bn).
“Our study shows that, not only is Cloud Computing an issue from the micro perspective of boosting the efficiency of an individual company’s IT investment and, hence, of its corporate productivity, it is also likely to be a critical macro-economic factor that will be crucial for boosting Europe’s economic growth,” adds the group's managing economist, Oliver Hogan.
This is planned as a two-part analysis, with a second report, due in February, looking at the economic benefit and impact of Cloud on specific industries across the five countries.
