There has always been a strong relationship between business technology and employment levels. With the International Data Corporation (IDC) predicting that the worldwide spending on Cloud Computing will be around the $42 billion mark in 2012, it appears that this advance is no exception.
The question remains as to exactly how the rise of Cloud Computing will affect the job market. Will there be a significant rise in the number of jobs created within Cloud suppliers or will there simply be an overall reduction in the number of IT jobs?
Forrester analyst Ted Schadler emphasises an inevitable shift from the nuts and bolts of IT to the more business/management side and calls this a shift from “Blue collar to White collar IT.”
One of the major companies where huge job losses were seen was within HP who laid off over 9,000 staff during 2010. One analyst remarked “If you can replace 9,000 staff with automations, you must have invented some earth shattering technology.”
So what does this mean for IT professionals and should they be worried? James Staten at Forrester research emphasises that networking professionals will simply have to update their skills, not necessarily search for a new job. Schadler encourages IT professionals to look at what skills will be required in the future and begin building on these.
Future IT professions may act more on a project management, supplier management and consultancy basis rather than working in strictly technical roles.
CIOs will have to dedicate much less time to concentrating on CPU, disk space and cooling systems, instead focusing their energies on contractual negotiation and management.
Of course there is always scepticism surrounding the subject of Cloud Computing and concerns that accountability, availability and security may stunt its growth. In addition analysts such as Ben Pring at Gartner attempt to reduce panic through emphasising his view that any large scale move to the cloud is at least a decade away.
Despite such scepticism the wide spread utilisation of Cloud Computing is largely regarded as inevitable and it would appear far more sensible to embrace it rather than fight it.
