Gartner: Big data, cloud to create 4.4 million jobs globally

by Xtium Research

It has become more likely that the tech industry, coupled with cloud adoption, will start to spur economic growth, according to Gartner. The research firm recently released a study in which it found corporate spending on technology like the virtual private cloud and big data will be directly responsible for an explosion in IT related employment.

The findings posited that while spending on the hardware side of IT will decrease, this will be accompanied by a greater need for application development. Furthermore, companies that provide cloud services will hire more personnel.

"By 2015, 4.4 million IT jobs globally will be created to support big data, generating 1.9 million IT jobs in the United States," said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of research. "In addition, every big data-related role in the U.S. will create employment for three people outside of IT, so over the next four years a total of 6 million jobs in the U.S. will be generated by the information economy."

This is welcome news for CIOs and IT staff who were originally wary of the cloud's impact on their job security. While costs related to the management of networks and servers will drop, there will clearly be a strong need for IT in the workplace.

The healthcare explosion
Healthcare is seeing a massive rise in jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the industry is also heavily investing in the cloud. Healthcare organizations alone are projected to spend as much as $5 billion on the cloud in the next five years, according to MarketsandMarkets. This translates to a compound annual growth rate of more than 20 percent, the news source reported.

The government has also started to incentivize the move in order to wean hospitals and doctors off of paper-based processing. The usefulness of electronic medical records would also improve under a cloud format.

"The market is witnessing a surge in the adoption of technology, and cloud computing is expected to bring about a revolution in the healthcare IT market," the report stated. "Healthcare data needs to be shared across various settings and geographies which further burdens the healthcare provider and the patient causing significant delay in treatment and loss of time. Cloud caters to all these requirements thus providing the healthcare organizations an incredible opportunity to improve services."

It is the functionality of private cloud hosting that is drawing in the users, and the widespread adoption rates are translating to direct improvements in hiring.