Stories by: Beth Schultz

If 1-800-Flowers.com CIO Steve Bozzo had his druthers, even the online retailer's mailroom clerks would have access to business intelligence.

It's been nearly five years to the day since Amazon introduced its groundbreaking Simple Storage Service -- or S3, as it's more commonly known. But despite that offering's track record, many enterprise IT executives still struggle with the notion of using cloud-based storage services to hold their corporate data.

Cloud computing demands a mix of technology skills, negotiating skills, business acumen and people skills. Here are 10 key skills that can help boost your career into the clouds. 

1. Get smart

Year-old start-up company AppFirst is trying to shake up the way IT administrators think not only about application performance management but also server monitoring in general.

Like Facebook for employee use and iPhones in business,data storage policy is a topic that can be a political hot potato within corporate walls.

Network thoroughbred Cisco jumps into the blade server market. Server stallion HP adds security blades to its ProCurve switches. IBM teams up with Brocade. Oracle buys Sun. And everybody courts that prize filly VMware.

How to optimize, accelerate and otherwise ignite application performance

Managing data stockpiles can be tough. These technologies can help ease the difficulty.

US Navy servicemen and women don their blues, whites or khakis, depending on the occasion and task at hand. For systems engineers at the Navy's Surface Combat Systems Center, however, the color of choice these days is green.