Organizations are going to the cloud: which competences for the IT manager?

Cloud Computing (CC) is emerging as a new trend for managing IT resources within organizations. It also raises a broad range of issues from technically-oriented to organization-oriented related to cloud evolution and migration. It invites consideration of new models of governance for systems, service and organization. In order to take advantage from the opportunities offered by this technology, IT governance processes must be updated and aligned with the requirements emerging from CC adoption. As a consequence of this phenomenon, from the perspective of resources and organizational capabilities, CC requires a rethinking of the individual competences of IT managers to fill the gaps related to cloud adoption. In this paper we address the issue of identifying this gap by analyzing the impact of CC on both the activities of IT managers and the competence areas characterizing their professional profile. The results of this study provides guidelines for the development of training programs for IT managers. Furthermore the final discussion contribute to the debate on contingency relationships between CC configurations, individual competences, absorptive capacity and organizational capabilities.