IDC estimates that, worldwide, 75% of IT spending is tied up with maintenance of legacy systems and routine upgrades, or "legacy drag." Cloud computing allows IT organizations to shift some of that legacy work to the cloud, freeing up budget to invest in IT innovation that supports business innovation. IDC forecats business revenue from the IT innovation enabled by cloud could reach $1.1 trillion a year by 2015 across the countries studied. While there would be around 13-14 Million cloud jobs by 2015, more than 50% of those jobs will accrue to small and medium-sized businesses, and more than 1 million jobs each will accrue to the banking, communications, and discrete manufacturing industries. John F. Gantz, Stephen Minton and Anna Toncheva in the IDC study- "Cloud Computing's Role in Job Creation: March 2012 Study" opines majority of these jobs will be found in emerging markets because of their immense workforces — 1.2 billion workers in China and India alone.
On the subject of Cloud jobs by size class, total cumulative jobs generated by cloud computing worldwide for the time frame 2012–2015 will be evenly distributed among SMB/SMEs having less than 500 employees and large enterprise (500+ employees). SMB/SMEs will have larger share of cloud jobs, around 7-5 Million where large enterprise cloud jobs are pegged to shared at 6.3 Million jobs. IDC estimates, while in most geographies, organizations with fewer than 500 employees account for a majority of total employment — more than 70% in some cases — but at the same time, they account for only a third of IT spending. This lower level of automation means that jobs created as a result of deploying IT cloud services won't mirror workforce size class segmentation.
Difference in adoption of public IT cloud services by industry are complex. Cloud computing "intensity": U.S. spending on public IT cloud services as a percentage of IT spending, 2011. Securities and investment services, professional services, insurance and transportaion would prove early adopters of new technology and are expected to be ahead of the average in the adoption of public IT cloud services as well. Astonishingly, banking and financial services, on the other hand, because of regulation, privacy concerns, and security issues will be closer to the average, despite being a traditional early adopter of cloud services.
Speaking on the issue of cloud adoption by Government, IDC forecasts Government adoption of IT cloud services will be quite heterogeneous, accounting for about 2-5% of cloud computing spending. Although banking and communications are not particularly early adopters of cloud computing, but they each will have more than 1 million cloud-related jobs by 2015. This is because they are big segments and spend a lot on IT.
The IDC study, predicts that IT innovation enabled by the cloud could help increase business revenue by 13.8 Million by 2015, which would lead to an increase in the number of jobs across many different fields. The predicted job growth is also likely to differ by region, with a majority of those new jobs coming in emerging markets, particularly China and India. Combined with cloud efficiencies, will drive significant organisational reinvestment and job growth. The study also indicated that countries investing in key cloud infrastructure will experience greater job growth.
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