This applies even in technological backwaters such as I'm in - maybe even more so. Living out here does present some challenges for start-up work, but more and more luddite businesses are finding they have to be web-connected if not web-based. So they need me (and can have me - until my night job becomes my day job).

That's only partly true. What matters is competitive advantage. No company is more competitive because its (say) email server is more reliable than its rivals. Therefore email is ripe for outsourcing. But in any area where IT/software/computation is a competitive advantage, that will stay in-house (possibly using cloud-like technologies, but that's not relevant to this analysis).

""Some percentage of the jobs actually performing infrastructure services, monitoring, and datacenter operations in-house will shift to cloud service providers like Google, Amazon, and the telcos..."

But for start-up entrepreneurs, this can be the good news: that the creative work of assessing a consumer/business niche of need can move more quickly to the creative work of filling that niche need in better ways.

The cloud can really be the friend of our enterprising spirits.

Besides, poking about with hardware and sysadminning can be pretty fun, in limited short bursts.

They should learn something new... Just because they're highly trained doesn't mean they get a free ride for the rest of their lives.

As your capabilities expand within a given budget, new needs arise. All of the marginal applications that were impossible to pitch under the old cost structure are suddenly compelling choices.

Firms provision VMware environments in order decrease labor costs and consolidate servers. Before you know it, the business "needs" ten times as many servers as before.

"Tech Jobs That the Cloud Will Produce - hands-on application development"