Now is a good time to bring your cloud computing skills to the forefront.

Demand for cloud-ready IT workers will grow by 26 percent each year through 2015, according to a new Microsoft-sponsored IDC white paper. If that estimate proves true, there could be as many as 7 million cloud-related jobs in the world.

IT hiring managers, however, report that the biggest reason they failed to fill an existing 1.7 million open cloud-related positions in 2012 was that job seekers lacked the training and certification needed to work in a cloud-enabled world, according to an article on SciTechToday.com

The IT sector is seeing only modest growth of IT jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average growth in IT employment sits between 1.1 percent and 2.7 percent per year through 2020. But within the larger IT sector, cloud jobs are gaining major momentum, and the IDC study suggests an urgent need to retrain existing IT professionals and encourage students to pursue cloud-related IT trainings and certifications.

"Unlike IT skill shortages in the past, solving this skills gap is extremely challenging, given that cloud brings a new set of skills which haven't been needed in the past," said Cushing Anderson, program vice-president at IDC. "There is no one-size-fits-all set of criteria for jobs in cloud computing. Therefore, training and certification is essential for preparing prospective job candidates to work in cloud-related jobs."

IT Execs Confident in Finding Cloud Expertise: Survey
IT executives are certain they can find workers competent in handling their organizations' cloud-computing needs.

Cloud computing may introduce new challenges, but organizations appear to be ready to handle them, a new survey suggests. An overwhelming majority of IT executives say they're having no problems finding the skills they need to move forward with cloud engagements, according to an article on Forbes.com.

This is one of the results of a new survey of 327 CIOs, business executives and other stakeholders, conducted by Dimensional Research and sponsored by Host Analytics. More than eight out of 10 CIOs (81%) and IT managers (81%) in the survey say they are "easily able to find employees or contractors" who can help customize software-as-a-service applications.

This appears to validate the public cloud service vision of simply being able to subscribe to services as needed, leaving the nitty-gritty technical details to providers. It's worth noting, however, that IT is still in the early stages of cloud, and the challenges of moving large, core applications such as enterprise resource planning and financials to more virtualized or cloud settings are still ahead. The actual coding and underlying systems development work may be once-removed, but there will be a growing need for skilled people who can help address configurations, data models and process flows, as it all fits into the enterprise.

Public Cloud Services Will Gain New Momentum in 2013
As 2012 draws to a close, a growing number of enterprise CIOs are joining the momentum toward an increase in the mainstream adoption of managed cloud services. The near-term market outlook for 2013 is particularly bright and the long-term expectations are equally promising, due mostly to the reported positive experience and results from the early adopters of cloud services across the globe, according to an article on CloudComputingNews.net.

Peer recommendations are clearly driving this change in the marketplace. Worldwide spending on public IT cloud services will be more than $40 billion in 2012 and is expected to approach $100 billion in 2016, according to the latest market study by IDC.

Over the 2012-2016 forecast reporting period, IDC believes that public IT cloud services will enjoy a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.4 percent, that's five times the traditional IT industry, as more business leaders accelerate their shift to the cloud services model for IT applications.