Clouds are nothing new to Snohomish County; they help drive our economy, bringing snow to the Cascades for skiers and rain to our lakes and Puget Sound for recreation. But the digital cloud is boosting our economy in ways we may never have recognized prior to the release of a new study from Microsoft.
Businesses of all sizes by now are aware that “the cloud” — where online hosts make information technology accessible to businesses and consumers via the Web — can help them dramatically reduce their IT expenses. Instead of spending ever-increasing budgets to purchase servers, network devices, data storage, maintenance and upgrades, real estate for server rooms and electrical power, businesses are moving all this technology to the cloud. When they use cloud-based services, companies subscribe to the technology they require, paying only for the amount they need and accessing applications, infrastructure and development platforms on demand.
The Microsoft report now reveals that the cloud is bolstering not just the bottom line, but the top line as well. The study, conducted for Microsoft by the IDC research firm, discovered that companies embracing the cloud are reducing costs and creating new revenues. Those revenues, in turn, are generating millions of new jobs in nations around the world.
IDC estimates that 75 percent of IT spending worldwide is tied up with maintenance of computing systems and routine upgrades. When companies shift their technology to the cloud, they are relieved of a large proportion of those burdens. Cloud-based hosts keep the hardware up and running and always make the most current versions of applications available. Without the need to maintain equipment or upgrade software, IT staffs in businesses, small and large, suddenly are freed up to focus on more productive and innovative tasks. IT innovation makes other departments in the company more productive and innovative themselves, and new efficiencies begin spinning their way all across the enterprise. The result is greater profitability — more revenue. IDC projects that increased revenues from IT innovation enabled by the cloud could reach $1.1 trillion a year by 2015.
Companies are spending a substantial amount of these newfound dollars on hiring to support growth, bringing on board more sales, finance, production, marketing and administration staff. The number of new jobs falling out from the cloud is far more than a drizzle. The Microsoft study projects that, worldwide, the cloud will have generated nearly 14 million new jobs through the end of 2015.
Those jobs will be about evenly divided between large enterprises and smaller companies. So everyone benefits, including businesses in Snohomish County. For example, the study indicates that in the discrete manufacturing market — which incorporates a swath of manufacturing sectors from aerospace to biomedical and other advanced technology production — the cloud will have generated nearly 71,300 North American jobs by the end of this year. Through 2015, more than 120,600 jobs in discrete manufacturing will have blossomed from the cloud across North America.
In other words, the cloud is helping to restore economic health here and all over the world. The lesson is that, when businesses look up to the cloud, revenues and the job market look up, too. You can read more of the Microsoft report and find out how to get your feet wet with cloud computing, by going to www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/2012/mar12/03-05CloudComputingJobs.aspx.
Katy Brown is general manager for Microsoft’s Enterprise and Partners Group Northwest District, responsible for directing sales, services and partner efforts in Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska.
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