Cloud computing opportunities galore in Ireland

IRELAND, UK: In the past three months, Ireland has hosted more Cloud Computing events than any other European country, featuring top executives from powerful multinationals as well as managing directors of rising spin-offs and startups.

Regarded as the largest tech conference in Europe, the two-day Dublin WebSummit 2012 attracted over 4,000 people just a couple of weeks ago, and its list of speakers read like the 'Who's Who' in technology. The question is: what has brought them to Ireland?

Affably referred to as the Emerald Isle, Ireland-often a lesser known country in distant places-is fast gaining momentum in fast positioning itself as the Cloud Computing capital of Europe. Ireland is the de-facto 'Internet Capital of Europe' with born in the net companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Twitter, and Amazon all having substantial operations in Ireland, frequently hosting their European headquarters in Dublin, the capital city of Ireland.

Ireland is leading the way in global cloud computing investment as evident by recent investments by global leaders, who are making Ireland the centre for their cloud computing strategies - Dell, in June 2011, announced that Ireland would be the company's first Cloud Research and Development Centre; IBM established its first European Cloud Computing Centre in Ireland in 2008; Microsoft in September 2009 officially opened in Dublin its first Cloud Services Centre for its EMEA customers, and chose Ireland following a comprehensive global analysis.

Amazon has a large data centre footprint in Ireland and offers its Amazon Web Services for utility and computing processing services via a cloud computing infrastructure; and Intel employs over 4,500 people around Dublin, including significant research manpower on dependable Cloud & services.

With frequent announcement of investments and job vacancies in the sector by not only multinational companies based in Ireland since 1980s and 1990s but also from new start-ups from the Silicon Valley, Ireland has captured the attention of Europe in particular and the world in general. A quick search for Cloud jobs around Dublin in the Monster.ie recruitment portal produces over 120 open vacancies today.

Attracted to Ireland not only because of weather-an important factor to keep energy consumption low-but due to the infrastructure in terms of data centers, electricity, and, more importantly, skills needed to grow cloud computing businesses, companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, Amazon, Digital Reality Trust, TelecityGroup and others have invested in setting up data centers in Ireland. There are over 20 major data centers, purpose-built for the Cloud, located around Dublin.

The opportunities are thus not only in data centers-the main infrastructure on which the Cloud depends-but also in areas of systems, software, and platforms all of which together make the data centers work. Since large amounts of data are handled by these data centers being generated by social media, the Internet, smartphones etc., the mining and analysis of this data is crucial for companies. There are thus plenty of opportunities handling big data and analytics as well. All these command strong mathematical and problem solving skills.

The interesting thing in Ireland is that there is shortage of manpower with specific skills sought by these companies. In an Intel Conference in 2011, Regina Moran, CEO of Fujitsu Ireland said, "It is a huge problem for the industry in that the skills shortage means firms are competing against one another for suitably qualified graduates." In challenges lies opportunities, students with computer science, engineering and programming background can explore numerous opportunities in the exciting Cloud Computing sector in Ireland.

Role-based approach of skills required to thrive in the cloud:

When it comes to the Cloud, the traditional IT roles have evolved, often incorporating distinct skills and abilities.

Cloud Architect - For any organization or consulting company looking to move into Cloud Computing, Cloud Architect is the number one job posting. Good architects who are good with technology can easily transition to "Cloud Architect," as they will be having necessary foundation to configure public and private cloud computing technology. However, this does not mean that an existing enterprise architect can immediately be a cloud architect. There's a difference between cloud architect and the traditional enterprise architect:

cloud architect = enterprise architect + continual service awareness + cloud technologies.

Any cloud architect needs to be an expert in the existing cloud technologies such as public, private, and hybrid, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. They should also have knowledge about the players and solutions that are available on the market as well. In a much simpler way a cloud architect is a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of Cloud.

Cloud Security Specialist- A Security Specialist is responsible for providing security guidance to IT project teams in charge of delivering business solutions. The individual should define and implement security programs, policies, procedures, tools, internal audit controls, and security governance.

This role is dedicated to ensure that services are properly secured and also that nescient services are sufficiently flexible in order to seamlessly interoperate with other security architectures. Expected to work on multiple tasks and projects concurrently, a cloud security specialist ought to identify and prioritize applicable security controls and proactively engage with IT project teams. The individual must master security models and technologies, such as federated identity management and data encryption and linkage.

Cloud Developer - Skills include understanding of how applications are designed, developed, and deployed on the platforms. This position is generally creative and innovative as one requires experimenting with new and emerging technologies and learning on their own, whilst interacting with other developers across the globe. That is to say, a Cloud Developer is a natural web polyglot with innate ability to abstract business concepts and work in a global team.

Cloud Infrastructure Manager-

As somebody required to pay attention to the management of the infrastructure in support of Cloud, the Cloud Infrastructure Manager manages, monitors, and modifies distributed systems located in-house and, often, in public Cloud service providers.

One should have knowledge of existing network, application, and database management technologies including not only knowledge of the leveraging Cloud providers striving to improve the performance and reliability of hosting platforms, but also on economic and environmental factors to maximize business objectives.

In summary, Cloud Computing is booming in Ireland and so are the job opportunities for self-motivated individuals with a flair for Cloud and Web technologies.

The author is head of Cloud Competency Centre at the National College of Ireland in Dublin.