Cloud Services Blog & Newsroom

9/23/2011 The Cloud Jobs of Tomorrow

The IT Jobs of Tomorrow By Chris Pyle, President & CEO, Champion Solutions Group

Recently, I read the article below from Tom Shinder, a Principal Knowledge Engineer with Microsoft.  It is the first good roles and responsibilities description I have seen for Private Cloud Personnel.  I think anyone who is managing a datacenter today must consider what the jobs of tomorrow will be for the next generation data center.  How are you going to groom your current personnel for tomorrow’s demands? What career paths are you offering your staff? Is your HR manager keen to what the IT staffing needs will be in the future?  I think Tom Shinder did a great job of describing these positions.   After you read his article below I think you might want to take a hard look at your current job descriptions and how they might change.

Till next time.

Cheers! 

  
Staffing a Private Cloud Infrastructure
By Tom Shinder, Principal Knowledge Engineer, Microsoft DAIP iX/Identity Management/ICG Anywhere Access Group (AAG)

The private cloud represents an evolution of on-premises data center computing. In the traditional model, the de facto focus was often on infrastructure and operations, and these were the most common skillsets seen in IT groups. With the introduction of private cloud, these skill sets will still be needed, but the number of infrastructure and operations specialists is expected to be lower.

To fill that gap, there are several new roles required to support a private cloud that you can prepare for. Remember, the private cloud presents an opportunity for you to “start over” and architect a solution that’s well designed and executed from the very beginning. The private cloud enables you to architect and build the solution you would have liked to create for your current data center, but over time, things just “sort of grew that way” and fell away from your ideal data center design. With the introduction of the private cloud, you architect, design, deploy and operate the new infrastructure from the service provider perspective.

With this in mind, what might be some of the new positions that you as an IT professional can prepare yourself for to maximize your company’s investment in private cloud? Here are a few:

• Private Cloud Infrastructure Architect - The private cloud is a new beginning and evolution of your traditional data center design. Architects of the private cloud will be needed to come up with the architectural principles and blueprints on which your private cloud designs can be made into reality. The Private Cloud Architect might come from the ranks of current data center architects, or they might come from other areas of IT who train themselves up on architectural principles.
• Private Cloud Security Specialist - While private cloud security has a lot in common with traditional data center security, there are some issues related to private cloud that are specific to the private (and sometime public) cloud. In the private cloud, you need to be aware of the security implications of the hypervisor, the security issues that revolve around resource pooling, the security implications of multi-tenancy, and the security consequences of communications between virtual machines over only virtual networks and the potential visibility (or lack thereof) of those communications to network security professional. These are just a few of the private cloud specific security issues that the Private Cloud Security Specialist will focus on.
• Private Cloud Infrastructure Specialist - The core infrastructure that supports the private cloud looks different than what we might see in a traditional data center. The private cloud will increasingly focus on a converged infrastructure, where networking, compute, memory and storage are tightly woven together to enable the capabilities that define a private cloud. The Private Cloud Infrastructure Specialist will need to be trained to understand these requirements are be able to source, maintain, manage and troubleshoot the new breed of converged infrastructure.
• Private Cloud Service Manager - This role relates to the new metering and chargeback capabilities introduced by private cloud. The Private Cloud Service Manager can put together service-level agreements (SLAs) that include the rules for service delivery and pricing that business units agree to when consuming private cloud resources. The Private Cloud Service Manager will have skills in both business and in IT.
• Private Cloud Application Administrator - While private cloud developers will be responsible for designing applications that can fully leverage the capabilities of the private cloud, new skills sets will be required to install, configure, manage and troubleshoot applications deployed in a private cloud. Application owners of mission critical applications (messaging, collaboration, unified communications, data base and file services), along with line of business applications, will need to update their skill sets to enable these application to get the most our of the private cloud deployment.

These are just a few of the new roles that you’ll need to plan for when staffing your organization for the private cloud. Over time, new roles may be discovered and corporate IT will need to retrain or find new team members to fill these roles. For the IT professional thinking about what the next move is for career development, you will want to investigate these roles and consider how you can ramp up in the near future to fill these critical positions in a private cloud infrastructure. One thing is clear – the future is bright for the IT professional who tools up for a future in the private cloud.

Want to learn more? Join Champion Solutions Group and our sponsors for a 10 city roadshow: Adopting Your Cloud Strategy.  Click here for more information.