Cloud creates significant job opportunities

February 2nd, 2012 - Research indicates some 10,000 jobs have been posted online during the past three months that include requirements for cloud computing skills. Wanted Analytics found it to be a 61 per cent increase on the number of cloud jobs posted over the same period last year.

Additionally, the London School of Economics and Political Science reported earlier this week cloud computing is set to create a significant number of new employment opportunities worldwide.

The report studied the impact of cloud technologies on the smartphone and aerospace industries, and predicted significant growth in both areas between 2010 and 2014.

The study also found the US to be paving the way in cloud adoption, mostly down to lower electricity costs and less restrictive labour regulation.

"Our analysis shows jobs shifting from distributed data processing facilities to consolidated data centers, resulting in a drop in data processing jobs overall as efficiency gains occur especially through public cloud services," the report said.

"We see a reduction in IT administrators within large firms in smartphone businesses (and most likely in many other similar sectors) compared to their level of employment otherwise expected by taking into account overall IT spending."

The report found the job opportunities created by the cloud were mainly through the construction, staffing and supply of data centres.

Further to this, "as companies switch to virtualization and cloud computing, related skills will be in high demand, meaning higher-than-average salaries," said technology expert Susan Hall.

"Salaries for managers of IT facilities and IT administration in the United States are estimated in the range of $70,000 (£44,000) - $120,000 (£75,000)."

About Rackspace Hosting

Rackspace® (NYSE: RAX) is the open cloud company and founder of OpenStack, the standard open-source operating system for cloud computing. Headquartered in San Antonio, Rackspace delivers its renowned Fanatical Support® to more than 200,000 business customers, from data centers on four continents. Rackspace is a leading provider of hybrid clouds, which enable businesses to run their workloads where they run most effectively — whether on the public cloud, a private cloud, dedicated servers, or a combination of these platforms. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company, and is featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information, visit www.rackspace.co.uk.

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