Cloud Recruitment Perspectives According to a study by the London School of Economics and Political Science the development of cloud computing will foster economic growth, increase productivity and shift the type of jobs and skills required by businesses. The study also reported that from the analyzed countries (UK, England and Germany), the US is leading the way in terms of cloud job creation. US cloud-related jobs in the smartphone sector are set to grow to 54,500 in 2014. As companies shift from proprietary application servers towards virtualization and cloud computing, related skills will be in demand among employers. While some IT executives will choose to re-train current staff,
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Enterprise Cloud Curves Ahead, PaaS Carefully We’re seeing a lot of changes in the IT landscape. Oracle buying its way into the Cloud, AMD wants in on the server business, Dell is no longer a PC company, and some legacy players are learning about the Cloud market the hard way. Harris claims customers have a preference for on premise (private cloud) solutions, though a McKinsey survey mentioned in the article indicates CIOs will take a “balanced” approach (read: Hybrid Cloud). Besides, acquiring on-premise IT business won’t get easier in the Federal government space with its shift to a Cloud First Policy, nor in State
Cloud Biggies and their Partnership Programs One of the best ways to encourage sales is through specialized partnership programs, and IT companies have long employed this strategy to promote their traditional offerings. Now they have started similar initiatives for their cloud computing services as well. While some companies have tried to get buy-in from end-consumers, even going to the extent of offering services for free (See: Ninefold and Rackspace Battle for Australian Startup Mind Space and Why is Rackspace targeting Startups?), others have started targeting their channel partners, all in the hope of grabbing larger shares of the expanding cloud
Is Cloud Computing Killing the Hardware Stars? Dell, HP: Take Heed New York Times “Bits” writer Quentin Hardy declared major victory last week for cloud computing. The triumph resounded well enough to earn the title “The Week the Cloud Won.” After lengthy months of incremental progress, cloud’s organizations have finally chipped away at the big boys of technology like Dell and Hewlett Packard. These heavy hitters in “enterprise computing” dwindled in earnings, whereas Salesforce.com, a major cloud computing company, saw its profits skyrocket by nearly 40%. True cloud diehards interpret these developments, as does Hardy, as bellwethers of auspicious change for
What’s Special about the Joyent Funding Round? There is nothing special about small companies or startups getting funding, other than the obvious vindication of the opportunities in cloud computing. In fact, such funding stories have been the focus of several articles here (See the latest one: Cloud Computing Startups Raise Big Money: UPDATE 8). However, there’s something different, and in my opinion, special, about the $85 million round of funding closed by San Francisco cloud services provider Joyent (http://www.joyent.com/). What’s special about this round of external financing is not the amount (which, by prevailing standards, is quite impressive) or the
To The Cloud: A Book Review When I picked up this book written by three senior Microsoft employees Pankaj Arora, Raj Biyani and Salil Dave, the first thing that struck me was its size, or rather the lack of it. This is no heavy tome extolling the virtues of cloud computing, but a brief yet clear look at the technology over 120-odd pages divided into four chapters. Now, you would expect most books explaining a new technology to be a bit larger, but considering the target audience – the busy, yet informed Chief Information Officer (CIO), as is mentioned in
Why Are Accounting Firms Cautious To Shift To Cloud Computing? A lot of accounting firms are reluctant to shift to cloud computing primarily because of concerns regarding service quality, cost, customization, and integration problems. Initially, these concerns may be a problem for the adoption of cloud computing but suppliers are swiftly releasing new products and services to allay these issues. Accountants have their own way of doing things and as long as this doesn’t run contrary to accounting principles and standards then they are free to come up with easier means to finish their accounting jobs. Therefore, a problem which
