Managing cloud infrastructure and services is similar to traditional network management - only bigger, badder and more complex.
Where once you had to deal with maybe one or two strategic outsourcers, in the cloud world you're more likely contending with a dozen or more cloud service providers, be they software-as-a-service or infrastructure.
With username and password prompts coming at users with every personal and professional login, every once in a while they're bound to forget which combinations go with which access requests.
Such lapses in digital memory can send users to help desks in droves.
The first step is to evaluate your workloads, says Mark White, CTO for Deloitte Consulting's technology practice.
"That's step one, and the conversation is really about the services catalog," he says. "If the company already has an IT services catalog, those entries represent various workloads. If not, you'd look literally at IT services less formally and their workloads."
If you're interested in achieving the benefits of a private cloud, but aren't sure you want to devote the time and resources to build one from scratch, there is an alternative - cloud-in-a-box.
As cloud computing moves from hype to reality, certain broad trends and best practices are emerging when it comes to the public cloud vs. private cloud deployment debate.
Anecdotally and from surveys, it's becoming clear that most enterprises are first looking to the private cloud as a way to play with cloud tools and concepts in the safety of their own secure sandbox.
Cloud computing demands a mix of technology skills, negotiating skills, business acumen and people skills. Here are 10 key skills that can help boost your career into the clouds.
MORE ON CLOUD CAREERS: Steer your career to the cloud
1. Get smart
Before making a move into the cloud, get educated on the principles and definitions of cloud computing, advises Johan Goossens, head of NATO's Allied Command Transformation's (ACT) Technology & Human Factors Branch in Norfolk, Va.
Malicious hypervisors. Subversive virtual machines. Live migration impersonators. Welcome to the world of server virtualization, where the threats are new and the traditional security tools like firewalls and intrusion-prevention systems don't cut it anymore.
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