2010 Cloud Computing and IT Staffing Survey

Information Week Analytics has produced a 2010 Cloud Computing and IT Staffing Survey that you can download as a free PDF. The survey reports that as enterprises of all sizes are beginning to evaluate the business agility and cost saving benefits that could be had by moving internal operations to public cloud service providers, their IT staffs—from CIOs to middle managers to systems administrators to help desk workers—are left wondering what the impact is going to be on them.

To figure that out, you need to ask a few key questions:

• How is our business going to change? 
• Who will determine what functions are cloud-ready and which are not? 
• How do I move adoption forward in a way that maximizes benefit and minimizes risk? 

The issues get more specific as they dig deeper:

• Which IT operations must stay in-house, perhaps because of compliance or criticality? 
• What job skills and roles will we need to add or retain, and which will decrease in importance? 
• Will the enterprise need more or fewer managers?
• In what areas?

Several essential points emerged that will have profound impact on the future of your business, your IT organization—and your career.

• The public cloud is here to stay, and usage will grow. Even cautious organizations will consume services, including business-critical functions, as providers mature and build trust relationships with enterprises.
• Internal IT staff levels will generally either stay static or contract slightly, depending on the types of services adopted.
• Traditional IT technical roles will be less in demand, replaced by “softer” but broader skills, such as provider contracting and management.
• The staffing levels and job skills required in any given organization will depend heavily on the public cloud service models adopted: software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) or infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

Find out how 828 technology professionals interviewed by Information Week are answering these questions.