ITWire

The figure is based on the assumption that cloud computing will account for 75 percent of ICT expenditure in 10 years time. If this figure were 50 percent, the estimated annual GDP uplift would be $2.16b.

KPMG chief economist and principal author of the report, Nikki Hutley said it was essential that the potential of cloud computing to boost Australia's productivity be exploited to the maximum, because productivity improvements had stalled.

"Successive governments over in the past have improved productivity by implementing a large number of reforms, but these have typically been the 'low hanging fruit' - such as industrial relations, tax and savings reforms. However, a number of factors have seen productivity slump over the last ten years. Widespread adoption of Cloud by businesses and government is the next key area of potential productivity improvement," she said.

Hutley cited recent research published by the Productivity Commission, which said: "Australia's productivity growth would seem to have completely disappeared. After a record-high rate in the 1990s, growth in multifactor productivity (MFP) slumped in two steps of equal size, first to a more typical rate, and then to zero in the mid- to late-2000s. In fact, according to the official 'headline' series published by the ABS, productivity actually went backwards."

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