If you are an IT professional yet to equip yourself with cloud computing skills, 2012 is probably the best year to do so.

According to an article written by Justin Lee on Web Host Industry Review, WANTED Analytics announced that there are more than 2,400 US companies posted more than 10,000 job ads requiring cloud computing skills and experience in the past 90 days. Hiring demands also grew by 61 percent year-over-year.

Non-IT jobs are also requiring cloud computing experience…
Computer specialists and programmers are two of the most commonly job titles required to have cloud computing experience. The good news is, not all jobs demanding cloud computing experience are IT-related.

As the ever-evolving cloud computing has became part of business strategy, even integrated into the company culture, more job titles require knowledge on cloud computing – at least cloud-based applications.

Marketing managers, sales managers, and customer service representatives are several of the jobs that are now requiring candidates to be cloud-literate.

Top US cities for cloud computing jobs
Did you know which is the most active city looking for cloud computing-savvy job seekers? The answer is San Francisco.

According to the same study, recruiters in San Francisco area have posted more than 1,000 unique job listings, a 95 percent year-over-year growth. >>Read more

Source: Cloud Business Review

BEIJING - Global data-storage suppliers are looking at China's small and medium-sizedenterprise (SME) market as demand surges on the back of a rise in cloud computing.

"The data quantity in medium-sized companies has seen an average increase of 59 percent annually. Demand could be huge in the next three to five years," said Adrian Chan, president of NetApp Greater China.

NetApp Inc announced new data-storage ideas in late 2011, targeting mid-sized companies - an emerging market that helped to generate one third of NetApp's global revenues during the fiscal year 2011.

Revenue contributed by medium-sized enterprise clients grew by about 24 percent from December 2010 to November 2011, according to a company statement.

About 70 percent of Chinese executives say swift growth in data was one of the major challenges in the information-storage sector, according to a survey released by the Massachusetts-headquartered research company International Data Corp (IDC) in late October2011.

However, Chinese SMEs are finding ways to cut expenses amid growing concerns about theimpact of global economic uncertainties, a move that may hinder storage suppliers' profitmargins and aggravate competition.

As the global economic crisis worsened, the World Bank lowered China's gross domestic product expected growth to 8.4 percent for 2012.

"If the economic crisis blew up in China, SMEs will be the first to suffer losses," China EnterpriseNews reported on Jan 3, citing Fan Gang, director of the National Economics Research Instituteat the China Reform Foundation. When the economic situation turns bad, one of the fewoptions left for SMEs is cost saving.

The Bank of China also estimated in December that the country's GDP growth for 2012 is likely to hit 8.8 percent, lower than 2011's estimation of 9.3 percent.

"Clients chose NetApp because of its flexibility and efficiency," said Johnson Chiu, thecompany's Greater China channel and alliance director. NetApp claimed on Nov 30 that it hasmanaged to save more than 4.6 exabytes of storage space for its customers, saving costs ofup to $11 billion.  >>Read more 

Source: China Daily

Spanish banking giant BBVA is switching its 110,000 staff to use Google's range of enterprise software.

The deal is the biggest that the search giant has signed with one company for its cloud-computing services, where software is offered as a service via the internet.

The bank told the BBC it would use Google's tools only for internal communication.

But the deal can be seen as a breakthrough in corporate adoption.

Banking - with its high security needs and strict regulations - was always considered to be one of the last industries to accept cloud-computing.

BBVA's director of innovation, Carmen Herranz, stressed that all customer data and other key banking systems would "stay in our own data centres" and be completely separate from the cloud solution.

The bank would use Google applications like email, calendar, docs, chat, video conferencing and other collaboration tools to "achieve a cultural change" and get "the whole company working together" across the 26 countries where BBVA is based.

Ms Herranz said the project - with roll-out across all employees to be complete by the end of the year - was not about saving cost.

"The main goal is to promote innovation and making decisions and increase productivity. We are in a challenging market and need to make faster and more accurate decisions... and eliminate duplication," Ms Herranz told the BBC.

Also driving the change was the increasing mobility of the bank's workforce. A lot of the bank's computing needs had moved to smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers at home, she said.

Jose Olalla, chief information officer at BBVA, said because workers now had "access [to] the information they need at any time from any internet-connected device, anywhere in the world, [they] will be able to be more flexible and mobile".

BBVA is one of Spain's largest banks.

It is also the largest provider of financial services in Mexico, and has a large presence in the south of the United States. >>Read more

Source: BBC

Mission-critical apps on cloud
Concerns around security as well as regulatory compliance have been major hurdles. The existence of standards like the ISO 27002, SAS 70 and SSAE 16 Type I have not given end-user organizations a high level of assurance or confidence in the service that they are buying. Yet, the perception that cloud computing is less mission-critical may be unfounded.

IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire Green Hat, a provider of software quality and testing solutions for the cloud and other environments. Financial terms were undisclosed.  

Founded in 1996 and jointly headquartered in London and Delaware. Green Hat helps software developers conduct testing on applications prior to their delivery, using cloud computing technologies.