A reminder to take nothing for granted. That being said, <i>local</i> technical work - where one's physical presence is required - continues to be in demand. The non-techies will continue to need hand-holding.<p>This applies even in technological backwaters such as I'm in - maybe even more so. Living out here does present some challenges for start-up work, but more and more luddite businesses are finding they <i>have</i> to be web-connected if not web-based. So they need <i>me</i> (and can have me - until my night job becomes my day job).
Yes, as they say:<p>""Some percentage of the jobs actually performing infrastructure services, monitoring, and datacenter operations in-house will shift to cloud service providers like Google, Amazon, and the telcos..."<p>But for start-up entrepreneurs, this can be the <i>good</i> news: that the creative work of assessing a consumer/business niche of need can move more quickly to the creative work of filling that niche need in better ways.<p>The cloud can really be the <i>friend</i> of our enterprising spirits.
However, some of us entrepreneur-wannabees still rely on "hands-on technical work" while working nights to plan a start-up. This may call for extra resourcefulness for future start-uppers.
My experince with "cloud computing" has been that needs always grow to fill all available capacity.<p>As your capabilities expand within a given budget, new needs arise. All of the marginal applications that were impossible to pitch under the old cost structure are suddenly compelling choices.<p>Firms provision VMware environments in order decrease labor costs and consolidate servers. Before you know it, the business "needs" ten times as many servers as before.