The cloud is here to stay. We're at a point where organizations are moving from dabbling in cloud provisioning to making it the backbone of the IT infrastructure. According to "The New IT Normal: Cloudy and Getting Cloudier," by Arthur Cole:

Already, the cloud accounts for more than half of all data center traffic, according to Cisco, and that is expected to climb to 76 percent by 2018. Much of the activity so far has focused on the development of private clouds, but now that familiarity with the technology is at a critical point, expect to see broader adoption of public resources, which will ultimately evolve into hybrid cloud platforms providing highly scalable, federated data infrastructure.

Given the effect the cloud is having on companies both large and small, it's no surprise that job postings for cloud positions are one of the fastest-growing skill sets on Dice. An analysis of searches by hiring managers shows that the future of tech pros working in the cloud is anything but gloomy. This slideshow features the top skills that hiring managers are looking for from cloud professionals.