For the first time I met someone with ‘cloud’ in their title at LINX70. On their business card it stated ‘Senior Cloud Engineer’. I asked what it meant and he replied that it was an opportunity to get cloud into a job title as he had just moved jobs. It didn’t really answer the question.

However, there does seem to be a shift in how IT departments will function in the future.

The people who have cloud in their job title design and maintain the underlying framework or network architecture. On top of this sit cloud services, web-based applications and proprietary software components which are unique to each company.

How these elements are used will be up to people who will have job titles like ‘business systems analysts’ or ‘business solutions consultants’, who will work with sales and marketing to develop new products and services for the company.

So, most IT professionals will fall into the one of two roles; technical or business specialists. The former being experts in data storage, data standards, security, server virtualisation, networks, mobile technology and IT architecture. The latter matching the right IT tool to the business need, and are very commercially minded.

So, it may be a cloudy future, but you will need to think about who will be doing what and how to deploy your resources over the next 10 years.

Mark Cadbury, Marketing Director, Hardware.com