Cloud to generate more than 200,000 UK jobs, predicts IDC

14 million jobs expected to be created worldwide

Spending on public and private IT cloud services will help to create around 226,000 jobs in the UK between 2011 and 2015, according to research firm IDC.

The study, entitled Cloud Computing's Role in Job Creation, was commissioned by Microsoft and predicts that spending on cloud services will generate 14 million jobs worldwide between 2011 and 2015.

"The cloud is going to have a huge impact on job creation," said Susan Hauser, Microsoft corporate vice president of the worldwide enterprise and partner group.

"It's a transformative technology that will drive down costs, spur innovation, and open up new jobs and skill sets across the globe," she added.

IDC predicts that the new jobs will be evenly split between large and small businesses.

The report says that the highest percentage of new jobs will occur in emerging markets, while the three industries to generate the most cloud-related jobs worldwide will be the communications and media (2.4 million), banking (1.4 million) and discrete manufacturing (1.3 million) industries.