The pace of change is only going to continue to get faster. Businesses need to prepare for this as best they can. Of course, this is easier said than done. Technology is advancing and IT teams are already short-staffed of the skills they need. What comes next? One new report looks at how we can bridge the skills gap to unlock the potential of cloud technology.
The SoftwareOne Cloud Skills Report surveyed the opinions of 500 IT decisionmakers from the United Kingdom, Benelux, North America, and Australia. The objective here is to understand how the cloud skills shortage is impacting their teams and how they plan to combat it in 2024.
Let’s walk through three of the big takeaways from the report—and I will share my thoughts on what needs to happen next to address all of this.
The first big takeaway the report finds is 95% of IT decisionmakers state that a lack of cloud skills has negatively impacted their organization. This is something I have been talking about for several years now—even long before the pandemic threatened our workforce.
Industries like construction and manufacturing have been facing an uphill battle that is threatening their success, trying to find staff, as many parents aimed to send their kids to college rather than consider the trades. Today, we are facing 9.6 million job openings here in the United States alone—and this spans many industries. The skills gap is proliferating nearly every vertical market around the globe.
Now, when we specifically look at the IT team, there are also many great challenges. We see this report points to accelerated cloud adoption in the last four years has resulted in a vast majority of the organizations using at least one cloud provider—and most using hybrid for multi-cloud deployments. At the same time, in less than a year, generative AI (artificial intelligence) has surged, with a third of organizations regularly using gen AI in at least one business function. As I started this blog out stating, this pace of change is only going to continue to accelerate.
This brings us to the second big takeaway in this report where we see almost a third (32%) of organizations have missed financial objectives because of the cloud skills gap. The lack of cloud skills is currently negatively impacting operations. Missed revenue opportunities and increasing costs are truly something businesses cannot afford to ignore.
Of course, financial considerations are only one negative impact of the skills gap. We also often see project delays, security concerns, tech outages, workload increases, retention challenges, and restricted cloud use as other negative impacts on businesses. I could certainly go on, but I don’t think I have to. I think many businesses recognize the challenges this skills gap creates. So, what then is the solution?
The final big takeaway we see here in this report is we see many strategies for how to address this skills gap. While there are many strategies for addressing the cloud skills gap such as upskilling, reskilling, and attracting new talent, investing in cloud-managed services is certainly another option as well. In fact, 93% of respondents view investing in cloud-managed services as a priority to bridge the cloud skills gap.
We know bringing in external help can get cloud projects off the ground faster and give in-house teams the ability to focus on new, innovative opportunities. And there is some good news in all of this. We see here 87% of respondents believe in the next five years, the cloud skills shortage in their organization will get better. We need a combination of solutions if we are going to address this. We need mentorship and employee retention. We need to find ways to bring new workers in—and keep them there. And we need to outsource where we can. Change requires taking bold steps. It requires positive change. So many questions, and now it is time to think about the answers.
Want to tweet about this article? Use hashtags #IoT #sustainability #AI #5G #cloud #edge #futureofwork #digitaltransformation #green #ecosystem #environmental #circularworld #skills #workeroftomorrow