I feel future DBAs will be more responsible in showing immediate result than long-term plans, so they have to be more pro-active in reducing the billing from Cloud Service provider by reducing usage of CPU cycles and Data Storage.
A Normal DBA today is responsible to make sure of the following:
1) Database is up and running 24/7
2) Backups and Disaster Recovery sites are sync
3) Database Security
4) Performance of Database
5) Capacity Planning
6) Backup Strategy
7) Pro-Active Monitoring, Etc……

We wonder what would be DBA tasks in the future when the Cloud Computing Era starts.
Other than the above, there are some responsibilities which will be taken care of Cloud Provider, but the actual DBA task would be more in terms of reducing Service provider’s bill by using Technologies and techniques like – Reducing CPU cycles to Run a query and Reducing data storage costs. That will be more interesting for a DBA to prove cloud service provider’s bill was reduced by 10% after tuning the database.

I am really looking forward to how this computing era will change at the end of the day. Do you think we only have couple of big heads who will provide cloud and all businesses will depend on them? Or these providers will increase like hosting service providers?