Lew Tucker, vice president and chief technology officer of cloud computing at Sun Microsystems, foresees applications that are entirely self-sufficient. Humans will be able to set boundaries, of course, but will no longer be needed to turn servers, or anything else for that matter, physically on or off. It is important, he says, that these applications be unified and driven by a compatible set of protocols in order to create a global cloud of clouds.

How will the clouds ability to administer itself affect the duties of the network administrator–who was has been traditionally focused on managing physical equipment and applications? Will the cloud create a need for fewer network admins? Will the role of network admins shift from management to design and implementation? What do you think?