Re: Steve - *applause*
"If you're messing about with Hypervisors still you're in real danger of being left behind"
I disagree, most cloud offerings are basically VMs underneath, so learning the basics by 'messing around' with virtualisation is a great way of expanding your skills. You'll start to get an idea of what machines can be virtualised, and how much resources they're likely to need, and what the problems and pitfalls can be. All of those things are useful for cloud stuff.