Undoubtedly, cloud computing has been one of the largest paradigm changes the technology industry has seen during the last decade. Players both big and small are making investments to gain market share, and news items related to cloud computing are increasingly omnipresent.
Some of the latest news items showcase endless possibilities, including Google exploring video processing capabilities in the cloud, Microsoft enhancing cloud reporting capabilities, and a whole range of updates from Amazon. Players are also inking new partnerships and reaching out to new geographic regions to expand the overall global footprint of the cloud. Statistics show that cloud consumption in enterprises is not only at an enterprise deployment level (AWS, Office 365, Salesforce, etc.), but also significantly from what employees bring into work, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
While all of this expansion is exciting to see, the industry’s fear of cloud computing shrinking IT jobs and taking over the industry continues to exist. The next few years will be especially crucial with the combined forces of additional growth in the computing world and increasing adoption in enterprises. Increased focus on automation and the newer reach it is able to achieve due to cloud computing is undoubtedly questioning the need for any manual job. Intel’s recent 11% percent workforce cut and increasing focus on cloud is news that the technology industry is still grappling with. Other concerns about the cloud’s inherent security, failover, and performance limitations are also more visible as its adoption rises.
While it may appear from its scope and reach that cloud computing is taking over the technology industry, these areas to watch and the need for human presence in engineered products will bring balance and ensure that the cloud is only as intelligent as we design it to be. The cloud will certainly be seen as a strong computing-enabling, cost-reducing, efficiency-driving, reach-expanding solution, all of which will make it a top tier offering for the technology sector. New disciplines will leverage the cloud to reach out to new markets with new offerings.
Engineers, teams, and organizations will need to see the current scenario in a positive light and build on their skill sets and offerings instead of feeling insecure and threatened—after all, change is inevitable and the only constant. The machine revolution centuries ago brought about the same kind of uneasiness and resentment in adoption, but it made it big with the new jobs that were created. We are not here to overpower the cloud or let it overpower the industry. Growing along with the cloud is what the industry needs.
