Cloud computing is opening new doors for businesses, allowing them to become more productive and efficient without stretching their budgets thin. However, this is also creating new pressures for IT professionals, as they will need to expand their roles within the company and ensure secure virtual environments to remain essential assets, according to a study by SolarWinds.

"IT's role of creating and maintaining infrastructure is transforming to act as more of an intermediary or broker in addition to those traditional roles," said Jonathan Reeve of SolarWinds. "IT professionals will need to demonstrate their expertise by identifying and implementing the most appropriate virtualization and cloud tools that fit their company's needs."

This means that IT professionals should understand the evolution of these technologies and how they will affect the organization. By being able to manage availability, capacity and performance capabilities, IT employees will maintain their standing within the company, the study said.

Additionally, these individuals need to have a firm grasp on cloud data security. The protection of hosted data remains a sticking point for many decision-makers, so employees with a strong understanding of security best practices will likely remain valuable resources.