IDC: Cloud really WILL save melting economy, just like the EU said

Only regulatory intervention by the EU will give punters the necessary comfort to dive into the cloud.

Or so says beancounter IDC, in a study commissioned by the, er, EC, just weeks after the EC itself said it plans to cobble together industry standards across its 27 member states.

The analyst "modelled" different scenarios and concluded industry standards will underpin widespread cloud adoption. Based on this, IDC estimates users will spend €250bn on cloud computing in 2020, creating some 3.8 million local jobs in the region.

"The diffusion of cloud computing is expected to generate substantial direct and indirect impacts on economic and employment growth in the EU," said IDC.

IDC reckons that if the EC does not develop cloud standards then market expansion will be more modest - €88bn contributed to GDP yearly and only 1.3 million new roles generated.

"Cumulative impacts would of course be even stronger. IDC estimates a cumulative impact for the period 2015 to 2020 of some €940bn in the 'policy driven' scenario compared to €357bn in the 'no intervention' one," it added.

Assessing the potential size or direction of the cloud space is clearly not an exact science - as demonstrated by the widely differing views of both IDC and Gartner recently.

Public cloud, IDC said, was worth €3.5bn for software services and €1.1bn for hardware services (storage/servers-as-a-service) in 2011, suggesting "spending on cloud is still limited".

However, spending on public cloud is forecasted to reach €80bn by 2020, but only in a world where the EC has erected bureaucratic scaffolding which is somehow expected to calm organisations' nerves about the cloud.

The beancounter said major hurdles remain security and the difficulty in assessing the "trustworthiness of suppliers", the geography where data resides, cost benefit balances and vendor lock-in with proprietary systems.

IDC's outlook is even more bullish than the one painted by the EC, which some in the UK channel have already said was far too optimistic. ®