Piers Dillon Scott, on his blog (sociable.co) writes, Cloud Computing represents a huge opportunity for Irish firms, public bodies and the economy as a whole. Realising this opportunity depends on moving at a rapid pace so that Ireland can establish itself as a Centre of Excellence for Cloud Computing before any other nation seeks to position itself in this way. The opportunity to create new economic activity and jobs by becoming a world centre for the development and export of Cloud Computing services will only be realised if Irish firms are early to these new world markets. Similarly, Cloud Computing will only improve the competitiveness of the Irish economy if it is adopted early by businesses and public bodies and so lowers our costs and improves our performance relative to international competitors.
Ireland is the world's second most globalised nation in term of GDP, and remains the most globalised nation in the western world according to Ernst & Young's 2011 annual Globalisation Index, th report also says that Ireland is forecast to maintain its overall second place ranking until at least 2015.
According to the Microsoft, Ireland report (Ireland’s Competitiveness & Jobs Opportunity: Cloud Computing), Cloud Computing is a major evolving ~~industry that will revolutionise how businesses and public sector organisations run their operations and deliver products and services. It will be a catalyst for significant changes in the national and global economy. If Ireland acts now, Cloud Computing will deliver much needed competitiveness and jobs for the Irish economy.
Ireland is an ideal base for the location of firms engaged in Cloud Computing activities. In order to capture a large share of the emerging world market. It's worth mentioning that analysts’ estimates of the size of this market by 2014 range from €40B to €110B in the area of Cloud. Silicon valley veteran, John Dillion heads up one of the fastest growing cloud company Engine Yard, which recently announced to establish EMEA HQ in Dublin. In conversation to Anna O' Dea (IDA Ireland-Innovation Ireland Review), says, Dublin is a moden-tech enabled city. The most important point that seperates Ireland from rest is the strong work ethics. He says when we hire an Irish there's a sort of respect for the employer and they give you that extra 10 percent. And of course there is a favourable tax rate. "The business climate are favourable, labor laws are attractive."
Cloud Computing sales by Irish firms could reach €9.5B per annum by 2014 and provide jobs for 8,600 people as current Information Technology activities migrate to the Cloud. New services and markets will also emerge as a result of the Cloud, creating additional opportunities for Irish firms. Early adoption of Cloud Computing by Irish users will take €0.5bn per annum of costs out of Irish organisations.
Not only this, Ireland’s government is making a concerted move to the Cloud. It has commissioned EMC, with Cisco, VMware, VCE and IDA Ireland to build a cloud computing innovation center that will be used to help Irish small and medium-sized businesses and the public sector test solutions in the Cloud. EMC is building a cloud computing innovation centre to be called Cloud4Gov, which could save the state anything up to 50% on its IT costs. Irish SMEs will also use the centre to develop, test and showcase their wares to public service and enterprise customers. (source: http://www.irishexaminer.com)
Google, Amazon, Zynga and Facebook all have data center in Ireland, and just last week Digital Realty Trust announced it had purchased 10 acres in a data center park just outside of the city to build out 193,000 sq ft of colocation data center space.
The Gartner 2011 CIO Survey, which gathered data from more than 2,000 chief information officers, predicted that technologies such as cloud computing will reduce infrastructure and IT costs by up to 50%. According to the global research firm Gartner, cloud will be a $149bn (€113bn) industry by 2015.
Apart from the cloud-hype, Ireland's shared services will be a significant engine for increased Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and has the potential to create and support additional jobs in a sector that already employs over 39,000 people in Ireland – an ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) conference was told today. The conference, which was attended by IDA Ireland, finance professionals and multinational companies such as Accenture, Yahoo, Coca Cola, Hertz and IBM Ireland focused on the significant growth and employment opportunities within the shared services sector based in Ireland.
According to the Julie Spillane, EMEA Director for Accenture Business Services, Accenture is a great example of the evolution of Shared Services Centres in Ireland. Today we shape process, policy and technology for the global organisation, delivering high-end, enterprise-wide solutions combining finance, procurement, IT and HR. He says, "We have been successful because we continually look for opportunities to improve our competitive proposition and embrace our global delivery model."
(source: IDAIreland Blog)
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