An EU-commissioned IDC study suggests breaking down the barriers to cloud service adoption can have a strong impact on the European economy-- boosting public cloud spending from €35.2 billion to €77.7bn by 2020.
The cloud can also potentially create up to 3.8 million local jobs in the region.
The study comes weeks after the European Commission (EC) announcement of a cloud computing strategy aiming to cut through what the EC calls the "jungle of standards" currently in place across the region.
"The diffusion of cloud computing is expected to generate substantial direct and indirect impacts on economic and employment growth in the EU," IDC says.
According to the analyst a "no intervention" policy from the EC will result in more modest yearly cloud contributions-- just €88 billion and 1.3m jobs.
"We estimate that the cumulative impact for the period 2015-2020 will be €940 billion in the “policy-driven” scenario, compared to €357 billion in the “no intervention” one," IDC continues.
The analyst suggests a number of "cloud proactive" policy actions, chiefly:
- Harmonizing data protection and privacy protection regulation across the EU
- Clarifying data jurisdiction regulation and providing EU-wide guidelines about which laws apply to data stored in the EU MS
- Promoting common standards and interoperability of cloud systems
- Establishing clear and harmonized principles around cloud service providers' accountability and liability for security breaches
- Developing EU-wide certification of cloud service vendors on their security and data protection arrangements and compliance with main regulations
Insufficient and patchy high-speed broadband coverage is also a "serious obstacle" to full cloud adoption within the EU, IDC points out.
