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Salesforce ecosystem to add $29 billion to Australian GDP

79,000 direct and indirect jobs will be generated according to study

The economic contribution of Salesforce and its ecosystem of partners and customers will add $29 billion to GDP (gross domestic product) in Australia by 2022.

The Salesforce ‘economy’ will generate over 79,000 direct and indirect jobs in Australia by 2022.

In 2016, the software giant’s customer ecosystem made $3.2 for every dollar Salesforce made in Australia. By 2022, for every dollar Salesforce makes in Australia, the accompanying ecosystem will gain $5.3, according to the new IDC research.

“As Australia’s first Salesforce partner, and in our 14th year, we have seen the acceleration in the growth of the Salesforce economy and its contribution to the Australian business landscape,” Sqware Peg managing director and co-owner, Reid Meldrum, said.

“Salesforce has enabled this growth through investment in its partner program, which builds a community of partners and end customers who can do business together seamlessly.

“In the last two years we have seen a huge shift in the capabilities of the platform and understanding, from a sales, marketing and service solution to a broader platform that helps Australian businesses really transform the way they operate.

“We are seeing conversations in businesses of all sizes change from delivering on a CRM need to transforming their end to end customer experience."

Australian growth is in line with the global trend of cloud computing currently growing at a much faster pace than IT as a whole.

Cloud computing is helping anchor a forecast 17 per cent annual growth for products and services supporting digital transformation projects, which will reach US$2 trillion by 2020, according to the research.

“There’s tremendous momentum behind the Australian Trailblazer community of Salesforce customers, partners and developers who power the Salesforce Economy," Salesforce APAC regional vice president, ecosystem & platform innovation, Robert Wickham, said.

"To continue this phenomenal growth, we are focused on empowering partners with the right resources to meet the transformation needs of our customers."

The research revealed that, globally Salesforce and its ecosystem of customers and partners will drive 3.3 million new jobs and more than US$859 billion in new business revenues worldwide by 2022.

In addition, the study concluded that the payoff to the larger organisation, in business agility, shaping customer experiences, and bringing new products to new markets, is much greater than the impact on the IT organisation, just as digital transformation is more than an IT function.

Successful implementations require customers, cloud providers and providers to work together.

“The breadth and variety of cloud applications and development platforms available today mean that most of an organisation's business processes and workflows can be migrated to the cloud. Legacy systems can become part of the digital transformation,” the research concluded.

According to IDC’s forecasts there is significant payback from investments in cloud computing out to 2022.

However, spending on public cloud computing will be less than 13 per cent of spending on IT, which the research firm believes it shows that IT is still on the ground floor of cloud computing, with lots of headroom for more payback.