The cloud is changing not only how businesses access applications and provide services to their customers, it's changing the way they view their own employees, according to a recent report.

With the impact of cloud computing on data access and the availability of cloud storage, job descriptions are also undergoing change as businesses move to the cloud. This change is transforming IT departments as well as the company as a whole. IT workers are now expected to search for cost-effective cloud computing applications, according to an article on CloudTimes.org.

With cloud computing, CIOs can now focus on creating business strategies rather than devote their time to fixing IT problems. There is now a growing demand for cloud strategy consultants, cloud architects and cloud service planners. According to a report released by the Center for Economics and Business Research and EMC, the growing demand for cloud computing services will generate at least 446,000 jobs yearly until 2015.

Hotel, retail and distribution sectors are expected to benefit the most, but the public sector is expected to require about 801,000 cloud computing professionals for the next five years. For business, financial and banking services, around 207,000 cloud positions will be created.

The Cloud Revolution and Creative Destruction
Companies are learning that while cloud has many virtues, perhaps its greatest asset is its ability to help business leaders shift huge swaths of IT budgets away from low-value infrastructure and toward customer-facing growth and innovation.

It's easy to get caught up, however, in the nitty-gritty of cloud computing technologies, because at the enterprise level the cloud industry is still defining its boundaries, according to an article on Forbes.com.

"And while the creative destruction triggered by the cloud is certainly shaking things up on the tech side, the disruption and upheaval will be even more widespread in the new levels of financial freedom and flexibility that the cloud will give to companies that use it wisely," according to Forbes.com.

This revolution is manifesting on two fronts: within the tech industry itself, as IT companies look to redefine themselves around the cloud, and among the businesses that are rapidly turning to cloud solutions to help them optimize where and how they spend their IT budgets.

Health Care and the Cloud Operating Together
Cloud computing is helping to streamline patient data and trim costs stat.

Despite the belief that compliance and security issues would slow uptake, the health care sector is moving to cloud-based platforms, according to an article on Infoworld.com.

Major factors include the need to increase storage and compute capacity using limited resources and the ability to centrally manage patient data that resides in silos.

The cloud computing market in the health care sector is expected to grow to $5.4 billion by 2017, according to research firm Markets and Markets.

Despite this growth, many in health care are still pushing back on cloud computing, citing security and privacy issues. But others are finding better security models and technology in the cloud.

"Most health care organizations moving to cloud computing are doing so to reduce operational costs, because many have very limited budgets - a powerful motivation that will overcome security and privacy excuses," writes Infoworld's David Linthicum.