The Cloud Effect: Creating a New Class of IT Pros

As 2011 comes to a close, it’s clear that cloud computing will soon be ubiquitous across the enterprise. As IT departments adopt the technology, they must also adapt their roles and responsibilities in order to manage the business’ cloud services for security, stability and productivity reasons.

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking around the idea of the Modern CIO lately, and were excited to see the issue picked up (again) by Forbes in an article by Joe McKendrick.

In the article, McKendrick discusses how the widespread use of cloud computing is bringing change to IT leadership positions. Writes McKendrick:

As a result of the shift to cloud, there is growing demand for professionals and managers that are more focused on business development than they are in application development. There will be greater opportunities for enterprise architects, and some offshoots will include cloud architects, cloud capacity planners, cloud service managers and business solutions consultants.

McKendrick speculates that many cloud-specific positions will develop into a new class of professionals. As examples, he pulls a few recent cloud-related job titles and descriptions from help wanted sites. Some of these jobs include titles like “Cloud Specialist” and “Cloud Alliance Manager” — positions that will help steer businesses from a strictly on-premise to a cloud or hybrid solution.

Will these new professionals signify how the West Was Won for enterprise cloud adoption? We’ll see soon enough during 2012 …