Looking Forward to a Cloudy Career

Grazed from FINS Technology.  Author: Joseph Walker.

Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Larry Ellison built his $144 billion company by having customers install physical software onto their computers. It makes sense then that, as The Wall Street Journal reports, as recently as a few years ago he dismissed the term "cloud computing" — the name for accessing software through the Internet — as "gibberish."

These days, Ellison is eating his words. Yesterday, Oracle announced that it would pay $1.9 billion to acquire Taleo Corp., the cloud-based human resources software firm. The acquisition comes less than four months after Oracle paid $1.5 billion for cloud customer service company RightNow Technologies…

In the land of software giants, cloud computing companies are being snatched up at a furious pace. SAP AG, the German software company, bought human resources cloud company SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion, more than double what it was trading for at the time of the acquisition in December. IBM recently paid $440 million for DemandTech, a cloud analytics company.

The flexibility that the cloud provides for businesses is valuable. Because software is accessed through the Internet, companies can vary how much they use depending on their business needs. That’s partly why cloud computing sales jumped 30% between 2010 and 2011 to $21.6 billion. Physical software sales — $334.6 billion last year — trump that number, but are growing a slower rate of 6% annually, the Journal writes.

Which is why cloud computing jobs increased by 61% from 2010 to 2011. The cloud is our future, so you should probably buy your seat on the rocket ship early.