There is no doubt that cloud computing is now a dominant force in enterprise computing. Most companies no longer buy hardware but rent it from two vendors who host their services in huge anonymous data centers around the world. Companies that stick to traditional have considered or are starting to consider Cloud computing.
Technology analysts predict that the vast majority of new computing workloads will go straight to the cloud, and most companies will switch to a cloud-first policy over the next two years: total cloud spending will soon reach $ 500 billion.
There are many reasons for this. Cloud companies are made up of experts who know what they are doing and can take advantage of a large number of customers. Cloud rental companies no longer need specialists to run email servers or billing systems, especially when there is a real competitive advantage.
However, this does not mean that switching to the cloud is not a problem.
Rental is often more expensive than buying, so maintaining cloud services remains a challenge for many businesses. And the hybrid cloud - where businesses choose the best services for their needs and then try to connect them - is in vogue. Few companies want to trust their entire infrastructure to one provider. Everyone needs a backup option.
The impact of cloud computing on employee skills is complex. Certainly the change has led to the disappearance of some technology jobs, as companies no longer need to manage core services.
Technical staff should focus from systems maintenance to developing new ones, most likely connecting cloud services. This will be important for companies that want to create new services in the cloud, but it is a significant change of skills for many employees to change from administrators to developers.
Also, as these administrator positions disappear, the IT career path will also change: the skills to management projects, innovation and teamwork will become much more important to them employees in the field of technology they want to develop.
There is no obvious backlash to cloud computing right now. Even a few major outages have shaken her up a bit confidence to the idea that for most applications and most organizations the cloud makes sense.
However, the consequences of this decision will take a few years to have a more accurate assessment.
