Great! The resulting 0.002% reduction in the live register as a result will show we’ve broken the back of this recession. Not too sound to negative about the development of cloud computing, data centres etc. in Ireland, but they’re not really labour intensive enough to make any real impact on our unemployment crisis are they?

Great! Just not “news”.

While job creation is a big priority, the micro level reporting of every job lost or created in the country is plain daft. If anything it has the opposite impact on the intention behind the announcements as they often reduce morale. How about the jobs are created and everyone just gets on with it?

The Argos announcement earlier this week of “800 jobs” was ridiculous as well – if they were 800 permanent jobs, then maybe a worthy news item. But most of these jobs will be for a few weeks, then announced again as new jobs next year.

The only time, even in the local or regional press, in the UK that I read about jobs lost or created or the really big eye-catching projects or closures of very large factories. These stories smack of politicians desperate for votes and pats on the back. When mostly it is nothing to do with their actions.

There is a difference between between sceptism and begrudgery. Am all for keeping well educated and skilled people working and spending in this country and fair play to this company in particular. However, at a macro level, I just wonder how many jobs in reality will be created by the latest wave of IT industry developments, which in simple terms appears to be based around innovative ways for storing and managing data. Compare it to the early 90s when the arrival of Intel, Dell, Microsft etc created tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Not all rocket science positions, granted, but employment at a serious scale. Correct me if i’m wrong, but the employment potential from cloud computing, data centre devleopment etc appears to be only a fraction of this.

You stand corrected ;) cloud computing isn’t just data management and storage; its everything that the web is based on nowadays – look at Youtube and Facebook, Google Apps, and Salesforce – there are thousands of jobs that rotate around cloud computing in Ireland and new jobs becoming available every day.

The jobs and employment are there, the skills can be learned and as this is the way that technology is moving towards with more and more systems in the cloud, the jobs will continue to grow.

I have just created ten jobs by driving my car into the front of a supermarket.

Well, I might no live or work in Ireland, I’m an IT freelance professional though and I would like to express this single question: How many local IT freelancers or small IT service companies will be out of business given the expansion of cloud computing service providers and their services being sold even broader than their country of installation?
How many of those 10 job places will be held next year, given that growing competition will enforce cloud computing service providers to reduce job seats rather than increasing them?

10 jobs is probably only on the hardware/infrastructure level. A well managed DC has a ratio of 250 to 500 servers to 1 staff. Of course if the end “customers” of those 250 servers are in Ireland, then there could – potentially – be a knock on creation of jobs if the customers choose to use Irish developers.

On the flip side, a badly designed and managed infrastructure would need as many as 1 support person for every 30 servers. These are mostly blades by the way, with attached storage – would require a highly disciplined support person rather than just high skill. There are numerous companies now providing such services from Ireland, including Amazon and IBM.