EU looks to the cloud for economic relief.

• Position: CLOUD COMPUTING - Brief article

The European Union (EU) is hoping that cloud computing will help its economy recover from its four-year debt crisis and recession. Specifically, CNBC reported the EU is looking to cloud computing to help boost the economy by creating 2.5 million new jobs and increasing the EU's gross domestic product by 583 billion [euro] ($760 U.S.) between 2015 and 2020.

International Data Corp., which helped the EU develop its cloud computing strategy, is even more optimistic, predicting that the new policy could develop close to 3.8 million new jobs.

Katherine Thompson, an analyst at Edison Investment Research, told CNBC she's not as optimistic. "I'm not sure I strictly agree that it will give such a boost to the economy," she said, "as the move to the cloud is often a shift from one form of expenditure to another, as opposed to incremental spend, and in many cases will be deflationary."

She added that she does agree with the EU's...