JOIN USIt was generally believed that moving applications and services to the cloud will eventually lead to a decrease in employee headcount.
The fear of automation, replacing human workforce has always been lurking since the first computers arrived in offices.
But in case of cloud it is predicted that it will create substantial number of jobs in India dispelling the fear of jobloss.
Microsoft in association with IDC, recently came up with a survey pointing out that cloud computing will create more than 2 million jobs in India, which is 15 per cent of the total jobs predicted to be created worldwide. More than 50 per cent of these jobs will be generated in the small and medium businesses. The study also estimates that revenues from cloud innovation could reach US$1.1 trillion per year by 2015.
HCL Technologies AVP & Head CFS – ISD, Kalyan Kumar believes that once applications start moving on the cloud the company has more money to invest in other fields and can thus spend some on hiring too. IDC estimates that in 2011 alone, IT cloud services helped businesses around the world generate more than US$600 billion in revenue and 1.5 million new jobs.
Capable employees
Kumar explained that adapting to cloud does not mean that companies would require less people but means they would need more capable people and the existing employees would have to equip themselves for higher productivity.
“Cloud will create new avenues for employment as the company employing it finds newer ways to cut costs and improve customer satisfaction in the process,” said General Manager, Cloud Sales Executive IBM India/South Asia, Vamsi Charan Mudiam.
A study by market advisory firm Zinnov pegs that the total cloud market in India currently stands at a US$ 400 million and is expected to reach a market value of US$ 4.5 billion in the next five years.
Associate Director, Infrastructure Services at Marlabs Software, K P Bala is of the opinion that as the cloud computing model evolves, systems administrators and networking professionals will need to acquire a new set of skills for managing the new environment that cloud computing will provide.
However, as applications and services move on the cloud, there are some security concerns which was echoed by Fortinet Senior Regional Director, India and SAARC Vishak Raman who believes that there is a need for security policies to be adopted.