This Week in BPOS News 2/25

This week in BPOS news is a recurring segment on the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog that covers news from all sectors of Cloud Computing and the Microsoft Online Services business suite known as the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). You can read all past This Week in BPOS News segments here. For this week in BPOS news we take a look at the U.S. government’s commitment to the Cloud, and find out how 90,000 public sector jobs are being crated with Cloud adoption. 1. Obama banks on cloud, consolidation, to hold down IT costs The United States has been going through some budget cuts from a recent economic deficit that impacted the entire country and numerous industries. Many eyes are focused sharply on U.S. President Obama’s upcoming 2012 federal budget that will help determine how the country recovers from this downturn. IT costs, that include cloud computing, are outlined in the president’s budget that sets aside $79.5 billion for IT spending during the fiscal year of 2012. Much like Microsoft, the U.S. government seems to be committed to the Cloud. This is outlined by federal CIO, Vivek Kundra , who “released a report outlining a ‘cloud first’ strategy for federal agencies.” According to Kundra, the Cloud could save the government 30% through the reduction of data center expenditures. There are conflicting views from the VP of consulting firm McLean, Ray Bjorklund, who is unsure about the cloud savings. He believes the savings apply less to government, and more to commercial businesses. You can read more about how the government is planning on spending and saving on Cloud computing in this ComputerWorld article . Do you think it’s the right move for the government to invest in the cloud? Do you think it will save the government money? What are your thoughts? Leave your comments below. 2. Cloud Adoption 'Will Create 90,000 Public Sector Jobs In our second story , we take a look at how the adoption of Cloud computing is increasing public sector jobs in the UK. The Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has determined that 90,000 jobs in the public sector are going to appear due to the prediction that government IT will be more open to cloud computing technologies which drive efficiencies. It is forecasted that “289,000 jobs are expected to be generated cumulatively over the 2010 to 2015 period in the UK,” meaning that 199,000 jobs will be created outside of the public sector. This article from CIO.com breaks down the CEBR report that outlines where Cloud jobs will be created across the UK are predicted. The CEBR also looks at profitability which will depend mainly on “efficiency, rather than volume growth, due to the pressures of reduced household spending power and rising commodity prices.” What do you think of the surge in Cloud jobs as predicted in this article ? Do you agree? Leave your comments below. What are your thoughts about the stories we shared with you this week? Did you see a story you want to share with us? Let us know what other topics you’d like to see. You can comment on this blog post or send an email to our community mailbox . Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page.

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This Week in BPOS News 2/25