The key to becoming indispensable to your CIO in the cloud era? Curiosity

IT teams fear that cloud might make them redundant. But IT leaders say that those who take on new projects and learn new skills should avoid the axe

"Curiosity" and a willingness to learn new skills will be key for IT staff who want to remain in demand as organisations make the leap to cloud services.

That is according to a number of IT decision makers, who were speaking on Computing's Question Time, a live set of webinars focusing on how the role of the CIO is changing as cloud services become more widely adopted.

One of the supposed reasons why many IT teams have been slow to embrace cloud services is that they feel they might be signing their own redundancy notices. Tony Morgan, executive architect at IBM, believes that those managing the service desk will be most at risk.

But he urged IT employees to become more flexible, building up their business-facing skills, in particular, in order to reduce the risk of facing the axe.

Thereza Snyman, head of IT at law firm Kingsley Napley, suggested that business awareness was one of the key things she looked for in those applying for an IT role at her organisation.

"The IT team needs to become far more business aware, and that affects not just the CIO, but everyone. Gone are the days that the IT team worked in the back office with no idea of how they affect the business," she said.

Philip Van Enis, group IT director at property consultancy Bidwells, believes that cloud computing won't necessarily mean that specific jobs will disappear, but that people in IT need to be more proactive in skilling up.

"They need to build knowledge about a lot of things quickly; curiosity and the ability to communicate and self-learn tomorrow's IT needs are crucial," he said.

Nevertheless, Paul Hughes, IT director at the Stroke Association, warned that there will be some casualties.

He suggested that IT infrastructure as it is today, especially "generic services" like email, will disappear. The challenge for the IT team is to look at all of the manual services within the business, and see how best they can change, adapt and automate these. In turn, he believes the IT team can learn a raft of new skills which will benefit them for future projects.

"It's about up-skilling yourself and making yourself indispensable," he said.