The Centre of Economics and Business Research (CEBR) reports the EU's top 5 economies could save up to €763B over the next 5 years-- through widespread cloud computing adoption.
It also estimates the switch to cloud could create around 2.4 million jobs-- however some traditional IT staff may be redeployed to bolster cloud service support.
The findings say rapid cloud computing uptake will make services cheaper as offerings mature and the economies of scale take hold.
Gartner backs the findings and predicts 20% of companies won't be owning their IT assets by 2012.
CEBR describes cloud computing as an environmentally friendly solution, as it uses less energy to fulfill business computing tasks.
However there are a number of concerns with the cloud-- including downtime periods and data security and access concerns.
