Since cloud technology is still such a new and evolving platform, many companies don’t know what to expect as far as how it will affect their IT staff, and many in the IT sector harbor concerns that their industry is becoming obsolete. File storage and data management are moving largely online and although this does impact IT departments in a direct way, it doesn’t mean IT is becoming obsolete. It just means that the roles of IT players are transforming along with the technology. Here we’ll examine how this process is taking place and what the IT industry can expect as these new developments unfold.

Cloud advancements

According to Forbes, 56 percent of chief information officers and senior IT leaders view their internal system’s complexities as insurmountable barriers to full adoption of the cloud. Although this concern has held some validity over the past few years, several cloud services are making this an irrelevant issue. Their innovative solutions for developing and testing applications enable you to keep, or even improve, the integrity of your current internal systems. This allows for the transfer of a file system and databases to the cloud for easy accessibility and enhanced security, keeping an IT department in high demand.

Service, not detail

Although cloud services are being simplified to help small business owners and entrepreneurs work comfortably in the online environment, they still require some know-how. Most business owners will require a small IT staff on-hand for taking care of various responsibilities, such as monitoring cloud services. This means IT jobs won’t be entirely cut from companies but will be altered to meet the changing needs of the business. In some companies, IT workers can expect to take on more service-oriented roles, serving as middlemen between customers or employees and the technology side of things.

It’s all in the training

Those in IT who want to stay vital to their businesses, and help their businesses keep money in the budget, should make it a priority to get comfortable working in the cloud. By learning the ins and outs of the storage server, details about the cloud services the company wants to use, and options such as cloud block storage, IT professionals will not only realize they’re an essential part of the cloud business-service model, but they’ll make themselves an indispensable part of their organization. Cloud services and servers have many beneficial capabilities, and it’s those in the IT department who’ll know how to put those capabilities to best use.

Since cloud hosting and service companies have also proven themselves highly-secure environments for data and applications storage, IT specialists will also have less to worry about when it comes to data security, backups and potential data loss. The ability to automate backups and have someone else helping monitor data increases security while reducing the workload and the stress.

IT’s ongoing connection to the cloud

With easy accessibility to data and programs from anywhere in the world through cloud data storage, cloud computing is the wave of the technological future. The IT departments that embrace this wave will be in for a pretty comfortable ride, as cloud applications and servers reduce the amount of manual work required and open IT up as a more service-oriented operation. The solutions that the cloud offers are being adopted by more and more organizations, yet IT specialists will still be counted on to have a role in maintaining and adjusting a company’s cloud strategy in the years to come.