IDC has released its latest predictions for 2013, and there's little surprise that it sees cloud computing as one of the main movers of the IT world.

The IT industry's transition to "The Third Platform," built on mobile computing, cloud services, social networking and Big Data analytics technologies, has dominated annual predictions from IDC over the course of the last several years.

For 2013, IDC predicts the transition to The Third Platform will gain momentum as the industry accelerates past the exploration phase and into full-blown, high-stakes competition, according to an article on BizTech2.com.

"The IT industry as a whole is moving toward the mobile / social / cloud / Big Data world of the Third Platform much more quickly than many realize: from 2013 through 2020, these technologies will drive around 90 percent of all the growth in the IT market," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC, according to the article. "Companies that are not putting 80 percent or more of their competitive energy into this new market will be trapped in the legacy portion of the market, growing even slower than global GDP."

Cloud will also be a powerful contributor to industry developments in 2013 with the merger & acquisition (M&A) activity of the past 20 months actually accelerating. IDC expects to see more than $25 billion in acquisitions over the next 20 months as cloud services become the centerpiece of more and more vendors' offerings. As packaged application become software as a service (SaaS) providers themselves, they will increasingly battle with SaaS pure plays for leadership in some of the major application software markets.

Elsewhere in the cloud, IDC expects 2013 will see an explosion in industry PaaS (public platform as a service) offerings as the market moves up the software stack and "horizontal" PaaS becomes commoditized by platforms built on open source-based infrastructure.

Demand for Cloud Skills Doesn't Stop at the Data Center Door
Looking for an edge in that job interview? It might pay to brush up on your cloud computing skills.

The number of cloud-related jobs for tech pros continues to expand, with tens of thousands of jobs listed in the open market. But cloud computing skills may be providing non-tech professionals and managers an edge in the job market as well, according to an article on Forbes.com.

Wanted Analytics recently reported that within a given month, more than 10,000 US-based jobs were advertised online for technology positions that need experience and knowledge of cloud computing. The number of job ads increased rapidly in 2012, reaching new highs in demand each month and is up 80% from a year ago. Essentially, demand for cloud jobs maps closely to IT overall.

Dice also reported that consumer demand is driving the need for cloud skills.

"Consumer demand for cloud services from folks like Amazon, Apple and Google is driving the creation of new companies and increasing demand for professionals with a variety of skills, from data warehouse decision support and big data technologies, to C and Linux network applications," according to Dice.

2013: The Year of the Cloud Architect
An evolving work environment is nothing new in IT, but those who are well versed in numerous tech disciplines stand to benefit more than your run-of-the-mill systems administrator.

New technologies have recently paved the way for data center innovations, efficiencies and growth. A big part of that push has been cloud computing, according to an article on DataCenterKnowledge.com.

However, cloud technology isn't the end-all in defining how the data center has transformed. There are numerous underlying components that now help support both cloud computing and a more robust data center infrastructure.

A growing number of organizations, data center providers and vendors are going to need help with these evolving technologies. They'll need people who are well versed in multiple technological disciplines who can make educated decisions in line with business needs. These engineers and architects need the ability to think and work "outside of the box" - especially with the amount of new technologies directly affecting the data center, according to the article.

Companies such as RagingWire, 1&1 Internet, Rackspace, Equinix and other large data center and infrastructure providers are trying to acquire as many talented, cloud-ready architects as possible, according to the article. Click here to read about the traits these companies are looking for in prime candidates.