The competency of project managers is one of the major characteristics of a highly efficient successful project. Many of cloud services are related to the software project management (SPM) field where the customers are the software project managers (SPMs) themselves. This indeed reveals many new knowledge areas, skills and consequently new challenges that need to be overcome so that SPMs can cope and make use of the new available cloud services. Therefore, this research aims to identify the challenges faced by project managers in cloud computing and highlight the knowledge areas and skills needed to meet these challenges, through literature review, survey and interviews with experts in this field. As the project manager is the main person responsible for the success of the project, the study concern to improve their capabilities in managing cloud software projects. And, to draw recommendations so that possible systems and tools can be developed and integrated to overcome some of these challenges. Data were collected mainly through the survey questionnaire and the literature review, then these data were analyzed by statistical basis on SPSS which it takes into consideration the mean value, standard deviation and test failure indicator using z-value method to determine the critical required knowledge areas and skills for managers in managing cloud projects overcoming challenges, to accept or reject the hypothesis. Identified challenges from the interviews and researches, were divided into six groups; (1) Project-related challenges, (2) Planning-related challenges, (3) Project Team-related challenges, (4) Client-related challenges, (5) Business & Market-related challenges, (6) Data & Security-related challenges. For each group there were 15 Knowledge areas and 10 skills which have been chosen as the top ranking important factors that can increase the productivity of the cloud project manager. The study focused on the experienced cloud software managers only, where the majority (70%) was more than 10 years of experience Finally, it was concluded that, (1) an up-to-date information of the top 10 challenges that faced in managing cloud software projects were highlighted, and (2) the critical Knowledge areas and skills for the managers that help effectively in overcoming the challenges were determined through the IBM SPSS Statistics 20.