 may not use strong passwords or authentication. This is an ongoing challenge for large businesses where individual departments may feel that IT does not respond quickly enough to their needs. Fewer IT Employees; Different Skills-DevOps When cloud applications are moved to a cloud provider's data center, companies need fewer staff to manage them. An organization that formerly required five people to manage its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application may need only a single person to manage it once the application is in the cloud. However, the skills necessary to support cloud-based applications are different from those used to manage traditional onsite data center-based applications. The skill most often in demand when large and medium sized companies move applications to the cloud is DevOps, short for development operations. www.TechnicalPDF.com The term DevOps refers to developing, provisioning (installing), and managing software. In companies that have applications in the cloud it means application development, spinning applications up to the cloud, and monitoring cloud-based applications. DevOps staff are involved in the planning relating to which applications to port to the cloud, tracking security or reasons for delays when accessing cloud-based applications, monitoring access to the cloud, and integration of cloud applications with business processes. Importantly, DevOps staff collaborate with other IT personnel and with management to determine organizations' needs and then develop applications compatible with the cloud. Compatibility with the Cloud All applications are coded to a particular operating system, and operating systems are dependent on the resident hardware characteristics. These applications may not be coded to operate on all cloud platforms. Without changes, some applications might not be compatible with hardware located in a provider's data centers. The addressing formats also need to be compatible between the cloud's infrastructure and the customer's data center, and vice versa. Addre