As the next technology wave, cloud computing has the potential to create about 100,000 new jobs in India, a study said Tuesday.
"Of the projected $4.5-billion total cloud computing market in India by 2015, private cloud will account for $3.5 billion, generate about 100,000 additional jobs and save about 50 percent of cost of IT operations for Indian enterprises," the study "Private Cloud Landscape in India", by Zinnov Management Consulting and global IT firm EMC Corporation, revealed.
In cloud computing, multiple servers are used as a single platform through a digital network (website) under secured environment with access to a range of applications and tools for reducing the cost of IT operations.
Cloud computing is emerging as the next big IT service for its pay-as-you-go model, which eliminates capital intensive investment by companies, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in setting up IT infrastructure.
Spend on using cloud by information technology and back office firms, telecos, BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), manufacturing and government organisations is set to increase to 8.2 percent over the next five years from 1.4 percent in 2010.
"There will be an increased preference of cloud adoption over the next five years in India. The total cloud market, which was about $400 million in 2010, is expected to growth by a whopping 60 percent annually with private cloud dominating the landscape," Zinnov chief executive Pari Natrajan told reporters here.
Though vendors with partnerships are better positioned to address enterprise needs, the survey noted that many Indian firms would have to invest in competency building to take advantage of cloud computing technologies as they were under-skilled in meeting the growing requirement.
"Cloud computing will reshape the Indian IT market by generating new opportunities for vendors and driving changes in traditional IT offerings," Natarajan pointed out.
Companies and organisations, which have not adopted IT so far or invested in data centres and server farms will have the advantage of directly moving to the low-cost cloud model.
"For cloud computing to deliver its promise, customers need human resources with cloud computing competencies, both as vendors or as internal resources. Though there are vendors such as ours (EMC) offering the solution to customers for making informed decisions, we need to build competencies to leverage cloud computing technologies," EMC India president Manoj Chugh said on the occasion.
The findings are based on a survey of over 100 chief information officers (CIOs) and IT decision-makers in India across industry verticals conducted during January-May 2011.