Clouds are fluffy, airy and quite cheery, more often than not. And as scary as storm clouds can be, they often bring an opportunity for watering new growth and clearing away debris. Perhaps that’s too literal of an analogy, but it’s fitting for what EMC is currently going through. Internally and from its clients, the enterprise cloud service provider is seeing some stormy weather for IT executives and managers. Still, EMC is holding steadfast to its clouds’ silver lining.

At the 14th annual GreenPages conference, EMC Vice President Global Marketing Chief Technology Officer Chuck Hollis outlined an IT path for navigating the changing cloud scene. Appropriately themed ‘Brave New World,’ the conference focuses on the decline in IT employee job satisfaction. Citing it as a result of the cloud’s evolution, Hollis also notes the need to push through the changes of EMC’s second cloud phase, shifting focus as need be.

Changing needs of business – IT focus on end users

One area of new focus is on business needs. As the cloud moves deeper into the enterprise, more IT departments are considering such services to keep costs low and productivity high. This leaves IT employees interacting more with client business needs, implementing more individualized solutions.

This is a perspective we’ve emphasized here at SiliconANGLE, noting the growing demands for custom business tool sets as they pertain to the cloud. For many seeking new client acquisition, boosting offerings around specialized features can sometimes be a deciding factor for an end user. Ongoing improvement to the cloud also demonstrates an intent of longevity as an industry, diminishing some security concerns, among other things.

This aspect of cloud growth highlights another __ Hollis mentioned at the conference, encouraging IT professionals to push through these changes and remain adaptable. For EMC, this second phase of cloud integration is all about cleaning house–out with the old, in with the new. “No U Turns,” Hollis says. “There is no trying to keep the old aging technology stack together.”

Steering the course of the cloud revolution

This line of thinking brings about its own concerns–adopting the concepts around a new technology can be a lot easier than settling on one service provider or another. For IT employees, the seemingly rapid changes are just more challenges for them to face in the current job market.

However, Hollis also encourages minimal layoffs, reporting none at EMC as they trudge through this second phase. A more useful analogy comes from Hollis himself, likening it to moving applications to a centralized mainframe. From Hollis’ blog,

“In many ways, the current private cloud discussion might be construed as a re-framing of mainframe concepts, only this time with a healthy helping of the new tech economics: commercial hardware, plentiful bandwidth and open source application software. Maybe the supporting technology is rather new, but the underlying cloud operational processes that deliver all the magic really aren’t all that new — especially if you’ve been around in some the larger mainframe shops.”

So what can we make of all these changes, at EMC and the enterprise cloud at large? They’re creating a rift amongst IT professionals, though many are pushing for the cloud revolution. It’s become a necssity in today’s business world, particularly in the slowed economy.