The Economic Consequences
of the Diffusion of Cloud
Computing
FEDERICO ETRO, University of Milano-Bicocca and Intertic
Cloud computing is an emerging general purpose technology (GPT) that could provide a fundamental contribution to efficiency in the private and public sectors,
as well as promote growth, competition, and business
creation. It is an Internet-based technology through
which information is stored in servers and provided as
an on-demand service to clients.The impact of cloud
computing on both households and companies will be
substantial. On one side, consumers will be able to
access all of their documents and data from any device
(the home or work personal computer [PC], the
mobile phone, or an Internet point, among others) as
they already can for email services or social networks.
On the other side, firms will be able to rent computing
power (both hardware and software in their latest versions) and storage from a service provider and pay on
demand, as they already do for other inputs such as
energy and electricity.1 The former application will
affect our lifestyles, but the latter will have a profound
impact on the cost structure of all the industries using
hardware and software,2 and therefore it will have an
indirect but crucial impact on business creation and on
the macroeconomic performance of countries.
Cloud computing can exert a number of effects
on the economy. For instance, it can enable huge cost
savings and more efficiency in large areas of the public
sector, including hospitals and healthcare (especially for
providing information and technology to remote or
poorer locations), education (especially for e-learning),
and the activities of government agencies that experience periodic peaks in usage. Moreover, substantial positive externalities are expected because of energy savings:
the improvement of energy efficiency may contribute to
the reduction of total carbon emissions in a substantial
way—information and communication technologies
(ICT) is responsible for 2 percent of carbon emissions
in Europe, of which 1.75 percent is due to the use of
ICT products and services, and 0.25 percent to their
production.The introduction of cloud computing can
provide cost savings in the private sector as well: it can
create multilateral network effects among businesses
and increase productivity within businesses, and it can
promote entry and innovation in all the sectors where
ICT costs are relevant and are drastically reduced by
the adoption of cloud computing.This last effect can
be quite large in terms of consequences for the aggregate economy, and is the focus of the evaluation of the
economic impact of cloud computing on the economy
conducted in this chapter.
In a recent study, we estimated the economic
impact of the diffusion of cloud computing in Europe
through incentives to new business creation.3 Starting
from conservative assumptions about the cost-reduction
process associated with the spread of cloud computing
over five years, we obtained results showing that the
diffusion of cloud computing could provide a positive
and substantial contribution to the annual growth rate
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1.9: The Economic Consequences of the Diffusion of Cloud Computing
CHAPTER 1.9
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1.9: The Economic Consequences of the Diffusion of Cloud Computing
108
(up to a few decimal points), helping to create about a
million new jobs through the development of a few
hundred thousand new small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union (EU).The driving
mechanism behind the positive contribution works
through the incentives to create new firms, in particular
SMEs. One of the main obstacles to enter new markets
is represented by the high up-front costs of entry, often
associated with physical and ICT capital spending.
Cloud computing allows potential entrants to save on
the fixed costs associated with hardware/software adoption and with general ICT investment, and turns part of
this capital expenditure into operative expenditure—that
is into variable costs.This reduces the constraints on
entry and promotes business creation.The importance
of such a mechanism is well known at the policy level,
especially in Europe, where SMEs play a crucial role in
the production structure.4
The next section will describe the development of
cloud computing in greater detail and comment on the
consequences of its diffusion for the economy.The following section will provide the results of our economic
investigation on EU countries, and the last section will
draw some policy implications and conclusions.
What is cloud computing and what will be its impact?
Cloud computing is an Internet-based technology
through which information is stored in servers and
provided as an on-demand service to clients, possibly
jointly with the traditional form of access. It is probably
going to develop along different concepts, focused on
the provision of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS, or
renting virtual machines), Platform as a Service (PaaS,
on which software applications can run), or Software
as a Service (SaaS, or renting the full service, as for
email). In preparation for its introduction, many hardware and software companies are investing to create new
platforms able to attract customers “on the clouds.” Cloud
platforms provide services that facilitate the creation of
applications in competition with, or as an alternative to,
on-premises platforms—the traditional platforms based
on an operating system, a group of infrastructure services,
and a set of packaged and customized applications.The
crucial difference between the two platforms is that,
while on-premises platforms are designed to support
consumer-scale or enterprise-scale applications, cloud
platforms can potentially support multiple users at a
wider scale, namely at Internet scale.5
The introduction of cloud computing is going to
be gradual. Currently we are only in a phase of preparation, with a few pioneers offering services that can be
regarded as belonging to cloud computing.These services are often derived from internal solutions (turning
private clouds into public ones). Meanwhile, many large
high-tech companies are building huge data centers
loaded with hundreds of thousands of servers to be
made available for customer needs in the near future.
The first mover in the field has been Amazon, which has
provided access to half a million developers by way of
Amazon Web Services (initially developed for internal
purposes).Through this cloud computing service, any
small firm can start a Web-based business on its computer
system, add extra virtual machines when needed, and
shut them down when there is no demand. For this
reason the utility is called Elastic Cloud Computing
(Amazon EC2). Google is also investing huge amounts
of funds in data centers. Already today Google provides
word processing and spreadsheet applications online,
while software and data are stored on the servers.
Google App engine allows software developers to write
applications that can be run for free on Google’s servers.
Even Google’s search engine or mapping service can
offer cloud application services: for instance, when
Google Maps was launched, programmers easily found
out how to combine the maps with other information to
provide new services. Microsoft started later but has made
high investments in the creation of new data centers. In
January 2010, the leading software company launched a
cloud platform called Windows Azure (introduced in a
beta version in 2008) that is able to provide a number of
new technologies: a Windows-based environment in the
cloud to store data in Microsoft data centers and to run
applications; an infrastructure for both on-premises and
cloud applications (through .NET Services); a cloudbased database (through SQL Data Services, which can
be used from different users and different locations); and
an application tool to access Live Services, which allows
for the synchronization and constant updating of data
across systems into a “mesh” (for all the personal devices).
Moreover,Windows Azure provides a browser-accessible
portal for customers, who can create a hosting account
to run applications or a storage account to store data in
the cloud.They can be charged through subscriptions,
per-use fees, or other methods. Another important
player is Salesforce.com with its Force.com products.
Also Oracle has introduced a cloud-based version of its
database program and is merging with Sun Microsystems
to prepare further expansion in the field. Finally, Yahoo!
is developing server farms as well.
The battle for the clouds among these companies is
going to reshape the ICT market structure, just as PC
distribution did in the 1980s. However, the need for
creating network effects in the development of a cloud
platform will keep the margins low for a while and will
maximize the speed of diffusion of cloud computing
between firms at the global level.Therefore, in the long
run, we expect a rather competitive situation on the
supply side of cloud computing.
It is crucial to understand the economic impact
of the introduction of this GPT.6 The diffusion of
cloud computing will certainly have a solid and pervasive impact on the global economy.The first and most
relevant benefit of cloud computing is associated with
The Global Information Technology Report 2009-2010 @ 2010 World Economic Forum
GDP.We used data for most of the EU member countries and Norway, for which we had complete data.
Moreover, we focused on a few aggregate sectors for
which we have detailed and comparable EU statistics:
manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, hotels and
restaurants, transport storage and communication, and
real estate renting and business activities.These aggregate
sectors cover the majority of firms in terms of number
(more than 17 million firms) and provide much of the
employment for the European countries (more than 113
million workers).They also include all the sectors where
the effects emphasized in our analysis are relevant—
namely, the manufacturing and service sectors—where
the use of ICT capital and the role of entry costs and
competition effects are more relevant.We ignored other
aggregate private sectors (such as electricity, gas, and
water supply) and the public sector, where we believe
that these mechanisms are either weaker or absent, and
sectors where comparable data were not available (such
as part of the financial sector). Country-specific heterogeneity and sectoral differences were considered on the
basis of statistics on the labor market and the
entry/competitive conditions at the level of EU countries and their aggregate sectors.
A key factor for determining the impact of cloud
computing is the size of fixed-cost savings.The business
literature emphasizes large savings. Dubey and Wagle
conjecture large reductions in the cost of ownership for
typical business services, suggesting that this cost could
be as much as 30 percent lower in the case of customer
relationship management delivered through software
as a service.13 International Data Corporation (IDC)
estimates a reduction of about 50 percent.14 On the
other hand, Carr suggests that about half of the capital
expenditure of modern firms is ICT related, and therefore a large part of it may be eliminated and (partially)
turned into operative expenditures.15 Although this may
be true in a number of sectors and for advanced companies, we prefer to adopt a more conservative assumption
for our macroeconomic investigation.
One of the best reviews of the state of ICT in
Europe is provided by the e-Business W@tch of the
European Commission.The 2006 e-Business Report
provides a comprehensive survey of ICT adoption and
spending, showing that, of the total cost, 5 percent is
spent on ICT. Since only part of the total cost corresponds
to fixed costs of production, the average ICT budget
must be more than 5 percent of the total fixed costs of
production. Of course, only part of ICT spending represents fixed costs, and only a part of it will be cut even
after the adoption of cloud computing as an alternative
to a fully internal solution. For this reason, we decided
to adopt a conservative assumption and consider a range
of fixed-cost reduction of between 1 and 5 percent in
the long run. Even the limited technological change
resulting from cloud computing delivers substantial
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1.9: The Economic Consequences of the Diffusion of Cloud Computing
a generalized reduction of the fixed costs of entry
and production by shifting fixed capital expenditure
in ICT into operative costs; the size of the shift will
depend on the size of demand and production.This
generalized reduction of fixed costs contributes to
reducing the barriers to entry, especially for SMEs—
because infrastructure is owned by the provider, it does
not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent
intensive computing tasks; this reduction also generates
quick scalability and growth.The consequences to the
endogenous structure of the markets with largest cost
savings will be wide and will include the entry of new
SMEs, a reduction of mark ups, and an increase in average and total production.7
In spite of the fact that the relative size of information technology (IT) cloud services will probably
remain limited for the next few years, they are destined
to increase and to have a significant macroeconomic
impact, especially in terms of the creation of new SMEs
and of employment. In times of global crisis, this could
be an important contribution to promoting recovery
and fostering growth. Cloud platforms and new data
centers are creating a new level of infrastructure that
global developers—especially SMEs that are so common
in Europe—can exploit.This new infrastructure will open
new investment and business opportunities currently
blocked by the need for massive up-front investment.
The new platforms will enable different business models,
including pay-as-you-go subscriptions for computing,
storage, and/or IT management functions; these models
will in turn allow small firms to scale up or down to
meet their demand needs.8
The economic impact of the expansion of this new
GPT may be quite large, as was the case for the diffusion
of telecommunications infrastructures in the 1970s and
1980s or the introduction of the Internet in the 1990s.9
To evaluate the impact of cloud computing, we adopt
a macroeconomic approach that emphasizes the effects
of this innovation on the cost structure of the firms
investing in ICT and consequently on their incentives
to create and expand new business; on the market structure; on the level of competition in their sectors; and ultimately on the induced effects for aggregate production,
employment, and other macroeconomic variables.10
The methodology is based on a dynamic stochastic
general equilibrium–calibrated model augmented with
endogenous market structures and is in line with recent
developments in the macroeconomic literature.11 This
model is perturbed with a realistic structural change to
the cost structure in order to study the short- and longterm reactions of the economy.
Our experiment is focused on Europe, taking as
a given the rest of the world (which is an additional
conservative hypothesis).12 Therefore, all our data are
derived from official EU statistics (Eurostat): these data
are mainly the number of firms, which is basically
equivalent to the number of SMEs; employment; and
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1.9: The Economic Consequences of the Diffusion of Cloud Computing
110
effects at the macroeconomic level. Needless to say, larger
shocks will be associated with wider effects.
The results for EU countries
In this section we report the results of our simulation of
the introduction and diffusion of cloud computing in the
European economy.We focus on the impact on GDP,
business creation, and employment in the short term
(after one year) and in the medium term (after five years).
Two scenarios are considered: slow adoption corresponds
to a sluggish 1 percent reduction in the fixed costs of
entry and rapid adoption to a speedy 5 percent reduction in the fixed costs.16
The contribution of cloud computing to GDP
growth can hardly be differentiated among countries
and sectors, so we simply summarize our average estimates for the European countries.The estimate averages
range between 0.05 percent growth in the short run
under slow adoption and 0.3 percent in the medium run
under fast adoption. Given the conservative assumptions
on the size of the shock, these are remarkable contributions to GDP growth, and will be directly reflected in
employment.
One should take the estimates on the impact on
employment with care. Even if we consider countryspecific factors related to labor market conditions, our
basic simulations emphasize the impact in terms of
hours worked. In terms of new jobs, the impact depends
on a number of institutional and structural features of
the labor markets and their country-specific regulation.
Keeping this in mind, we found that the introduction
of cloud computing could create, on average, about a
million additional jobs in Europe. About two-thirds of
this job creation is expected to occur in the six largest
countries (the United Kingdom, Germany, France,
Poland, Italy, and Spain), but also the other EU countries could enjoy a temporary increase in employment.
Of course, this increase will vanish over time because
the structural features of the economy lead employment
toward its natural level, which is affected only in a small
measure by the reduction of fixed costs. However, the
short-run impact can be quite strong and, in a period
of crisis such as the one forecasted for the forthcoming
years, it can contribute to limiting the increase of the
unemployment rate in a substantial way. Our estimates
of the reduction of the unemployment rate in European
countries from the introduction of cloud computing are
around 0.5 to 0.6 percent in the short run and 0.2 to
3 percent in the medium run.
Before adding further details, it is worthwhile
outlining the mechanism emphasized in our model.The
gradual introduction of cloud computing reduces the
fixed costs and increases incentives for entry into each
sector.This increases current and future competition in
each market and tends to reduce mark ups, thus increasing demand and therefore increasing production.The
associated increase in labor demand induces an upward
pressure on wages that, in turn, induces workers to work
more (or new agents to enter the labor force).The current
and expected increase in output affects consumption
and savings behavior. In the short run, the demand for
new business creation requires an increase in savings,
which may result in a temporary negative impact on
consumption. However, in the medium and long runs,
the positive impact of cloud computing on output leads
to an increase in consumption toward a higher steadystate level. Of course, a faster adoption exerts a larger
impact on business creation and therefore on output and
employment as well.
Given this overview of the results in terms of GDP
and employment, we now present our results in terms
of estimated new business creation.The largest impact
is expected, in the medium run under fast adoption, to
occur in the aggregate sectors of wholesale and retail
trade (156,000 new firms) and of real estate and other
business activities (with 144,000 new SMEs). Our
empirical exercise shows a strong impact on the creation
of new SMEs, of the magnitude of a few hundred
thousand in the whole European Union (again, this is
in addition to new SMEs created in a normal situation,
without the introduction of cloud computing).The
effect is permanent and tends to increase over time: the
creation of new SMEs will not vanish, but will remain
over time, making a permanent impact on the structure
of the economy. Moreover, the effect is deeper in countries where the diffusion of SMEs is particularly strong
or where ICT adoption has been generally rapid. In
absolute terms, cloud computing is estimated to have
the largest impact in Italy in terms of new businesses
(with 81,000 new SMEs in the medium run under fast
adoption), followed by Spain (plus 55,000), France
(48,000), Germany (39,000), the United Kingdom
(35,000), and Poland (32,000).
We have also examined the impact of cloud computing on employment in each country, distinguishing
among aggregate sectors. In absolute terms, the largest
impact is expected for the manufacturing sector and also
for the sector under the label “hotels and restaurants.”17
According to our estimates, the United Kingdom will
exhibit the greatest impact in terms of new workers
(with 240,000 new workers in the short run under
fast adoption), followed by Germany (160,000), France
(100,000), Poland (94,000), Italy (76,000), and Spain
(69,000). Overall, the results per country are affected
by differences in labor market conditions that tend to
influence the ability of the economy to react to a positive change through job creation, and also by differences
in the regulatory framework and in the competitive
conditions in the goods markets that create the conditions for rapid business creation.
The Global Information Technology Report 2009-2010 @ 2010 World Economic Forum
• international agreements in favor of unrestricted
flow of data across borders (since data centers are
located in different countries with different privacy
laws, data portability remains a key issue for the
diffusion of cloud computing);
• agreements between EU authorities and industry
leaders on a minimum set of technological standards and process standards to be respected in the
provision of cloud computing services—these
agreements would guarantee data security and
privacy and promote a healthy diffusion of the
new technology;
• expansion of broadband capacity; and
• introduction of fiscal incentives for the adoption of
cloud computing and a specific promotion in particularly dynamic sectors (for instance, governments
could finance, up to a specified limit, the variable
costs of computing for all the domestic and foreign
firms that decide to adopt a cloud computing
solution).
These policies may be studied in such a way as to
optimize the process of adoption of the new technology
and to strengthen the propagation of its benefits within
the country.The benefits of cloud computing are many,
and countries now have the opportunity to jump-start
their economies by making policies that will enhance its
adoption.
Notes
1 See Dubey and Wagle 2007 and Armbrust et al. 2009 for early
reviews of the topic.
2 The positive association between ICT innovations and competition
is well known, and policymakers recognize that it may work in
both directions: on one side competitive sectors adopt ICT innovations earlier and become more productive; on the other side ICT
adoption enhances competition. For instance, the e-Business
W@tch of the European Commission (2008) notices that “while it
seems obvious that increasing levels of competition can push
companies to adopt and use ICT, the opposite might well also be
the case. In fact, ICT and the usage of the internet have drastically impacted on certain sectors such as banking and reshaped the
competitive scenario” (p. 42).
3 Etro 2009a.
4 Again, the e-Business W@tch of the European Commission (2008)
emphasizes this aspect clearly: “SMEs form significant industry
segments in the EU and account for the majority share in EU
employment. Thus, they require specific policy attention. While
their strength lies in the flexibility with which they can adjust to
changing market conditions, their small size makes them less able
to face high up-front costs” (p. 53).
5 In the business literature, cloud computing has been seen as a
step in the commoditization of IT investments (Carr 2003); as the
outcome of an evolution toward a utility business model in which
computing capabilities are provided as a service (Rappa 2004); as
the core element of the era of Web 2.0, in which Internet is used
as a software platform (O’Reilly 2005); or simply as an application
of the generativity power of the Internet (Zittrain 2007). See also
IDC 2008.
6 For an introduction to innovation and growth theory, see
Acemoglu 2009 and Aghion and Howitt 2009.
7 Moreover, cloud computing is going to introduce the possibility of
(1) sharing resources (and costs) among a large pool of users, (2)
allowing for centralization of infrastructures in areas with lower
costs, and (3) allowing for peak-load capacity increases (generating efficiency improvements for systems that are often only
10–20 percent utilized). These features will lead to additional savings in energy and to greater environmental sustainability, whose
measure, however, is subject to great uncertainty.
1.9: The Economic Consequences of the Diffusion of Cloud Computing
Conclusions
Part of the positive effects of cloud computing will follow from the speed of adoption of the new technology.
There are a number of factors that may slow down this
adoption, such as a lack of understanding of the cloud
by firms, systemic risk, security, privacy and interoperability issues, reliability, jurisdictional complexity, data
governance, loss of IT control, and general status quo
inertia. For this reason, our investigation suggests that
policymakers should promote as rapid an adoption of
cloud computing as possible. Concrete interventions
include:
8 This mechanism is going to be crucial in Europe because of the
large presence of SMEs and of the higher risk aversion of
European entrepreneurs compared with their American counterparts (largely because of differences in the capital and credit markets and in the venture capital market). Reduction of the fixed
costs may reduce the risk of failure and promote entry even
more.
9 On the diffusion of telecommunications infrastructures, see Röller
and Waverman 2001; on the introduction of the Internet, see
Varian et al. 2002. These were econometric studies done after the
introduction of these technologies took place. We rely on simulations because our analysis occurs before the introduction of the
technology; of course, this makes our calculations subject to
greater uncertainty.
10 Etro 2009a.
11 See Ghironi and Melitz 2005; Bilbiie et al. 2007, 2008a, b; Etro
2007; Colciago and Etro 2008; Etro and Colciago 2010. See Etro
2009b for a survey.
12 Taking into consideration the gains in the competitiveness of firms
in other continents may increase the benefits of this technology
and also increase the costs of a slower diffusion in Europe.
13 Dubey and Wagle 2007.
14 IDC 2008.
15 Carr 2003.
16 Further details can be found in Etro 2009a.
17 Overall, the impact of cloud computing on employment is more
limited than its impact on business creation for a simple reason.
One of the main advantages of cloud computing is an induced
change in the market structure of many sectors, with the creation
of more firms and an increase in the level of competitiveness; this
increase in competitiveness is also associated with a reduction in
prices. This change in the market structure, associated with larger
efficiency, induces a re-allocation of jobs that does not greatly
increase the number of workers. In this case we are talking about
a few hundred additional workers (or a corresponding lower number of unemployed) at the European level. Our simulation emphasizes a slow reduction of the net impact on employment in the
medium run compared with its impact in the short run. This is
normal because the absolute impact on the labor force tends to
vanish in the long run.
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