Joe Dermody| Irishexaminer
Effective use of cloud strategies could create up to 8,600 jobs and deliver €9.4bn annually in sales, business analysts said at an Irish Management Institute (IMI) breakfast briefing in Dublin.
Dr Fergal Carton, UCC, said better use of the cloud’s potential would be hugely beneficial to the Irish economy, creating new recurring income streams, shrinking the time required to implement change, and keeping expansion company costs down.
Dr Carton is programme director of the IMI Diploma in Cloud Strategy, a joint venture between IMI, UCC and Microsoft. This focuses on the identification of strategic opportunities arising out of cloud based business models.
Dr Carton said: “Budgetary pressures don’t mean innovation has to be sidelined. On the contrary, the cloud offers opportunities for Irish organisations to implement change quickly, economically and with minimal risk.”
The speakers also referred to a 2011 study by Goodbody which stated cloud-based innovation in Ireland has the potential to deliver €9.4bn in sales annually and create up to 8,600 jobs across the country.
Led by Dr Carton, the session also heard from Eamon Moore of Cloud Compare, Barry Murphy of Sendmode and Shay Moran of ACTCloud, who outlined how their businesses are applying cloud strategies to grow and support job creation.
Attendees learned how Cloud Compare, Sendmode and ACTCloud have all transformed their business models by leveraging cloud services.
Cloud Compare provides cloud consultancy, migration and brokerage services to businesses ranging from SME up to enterprise level.
Sendmode is a mobile marketing platform that services over 5,000 businesses in Ireland, UK, and South Africa.
ACT designs and manufactures high quality access control products for the security industry, providing innovative and cost effective solutions across the market spectrum.
