Addressing the Cloud Skills Shortage

In recent years, cloud technologies have moved from a useful capability to a near necessity and industry standard for consumers, businesses, and organizations alike – greatly assisting and driving efforts such as digital transformation. The rise in dependance on cloud technologies has increased accessibility, storage ability and flexibility for users and organizations, helping to significantly optimize critical processes and tasks, all while reducing downtime. In response, professionals with cloud specific skillsets have experienced an increase in demand to help develop, implement, configure and maintain related applications and systems; a demand that is not currently fulfilled in the marketplace.

The shortage of professionals with cloud skills has attributed to the increase in average cost for those with such experience, making available cloud professionals some of the most expensive, hard-to-retain talent across the industry. As a result, there has been a significant push for organizations to reskill current employees who don’t already have cloud skillsets, and train new hires in a similar fashion. Some organizations are leveraging their existing cloud professionals to train/mentor appropriate members of their workforce, or requiring their employees to maintain some form of cloud training or certificate accreditation as part of their employment agreements. For some, this approach is not feasible due to time and financial commitments, and instead they look to partner with IT consulting firms to help provide needed cloud expertise. This typically includes cloud development, architecture, security and engineering – along with assistance in employing related training and mentoring programs to accomplish cloud-based requirements.

Why is there a Skills Shortage?

The shortage of professionals with cloud-based skills is currently a notable concern for organizations across the world. The significant reliance on and transition to cloud technologies and its related demand for cloud resources (such as developers, architects, security, engineers, etc.) was already on the rise pre-pandemic, but has skyrocketed since the onset of COVID-19. This enabled the accelerated adoption of remote and cloud-based reliance for organizations who may not have leveraged such prior to this time period. If anything is most likely, it’s that usage of these technologies is here to stay and will only continue to rise.

Today, over 90 percent of IT leaders plan to expand their cloud usage and overall environments, yet the shortage of cloud professionals is a persistent challenge in accomplishing related goals. Adoption of cloud technologies has provided more efficient and effective operations for organizations, making addressing the cloud skills shortage a chief concern to maintaining progress and remaining competitive.

How to Upskill, Reskill, and Even Train your Workforce

There’s a number of approaches organizations should consider for addressing the aforementioned cloud skillset challenges in the marketplace. Upskilling and reskilling current employees and new hires is certainly a strong option, but how can organizations execute this plan? Should they rely on senior professionals or cloud experts within their ranks to train their other employees? Should they invest in training courses and certification programs for their workforce to learn cloud development skills? How much of a time and financial commitment would this present, especially if technological resources must be diverted from their regular job responsibilities to meet the additional challenge of mentoring/training others?

To alleviate these burdens and ultimately accomplish the development of necessary cloud acumen, organizations should undoubtedly consider partnering with IT consulting firms who have applicable cloud expertise and can assist in a number of methodical ways. Certain IT consulting firms can help identify and provide the cloud professionals you seek through their proven IT staff augmentation practices, identifying and ultimately securing appropriately skilled resources who are chosen to address your organization’s unique and specific needs. Engaging individual consultants via staff augmentation allows you to specify a fixed duration for the services needed, and alleviates the need to identify, hire and train cloud professionals on your own time, allowing already seasoned professionals with a track record to assist with everyday cloud requirements or specific objectives. Furthermore, if you’d like to reskill and upskill your workforce in cloud technologies, an IT consulting firms are able to provide talented trainers who specifically specialize in educating workforces on cloud technologies, tools and related strategies. Instead of diverting work output and time of existing employees, supplementing your workforce with the help of a trusted vendor who you can consider a partner should be considered. This can provide more versatility and efficiency for organizations with already stretched resources, helping to accelerate the rate of accomplishing their cloud-related goals and objectives.

Accomplishing Your Goals with QED National

QED National helps organizations by supplementing their teams with valuable resources, including cloud specialists, with which they are able to accomplish their various goals and objectives. With our help, our partners are able to develop, implement, configure and maintain their cloud related applications and environments, all while training their existing workforces in applicable cloud technologies to bolster their internal capabilities.

QED National’s customers have consistently referred to the firm as a trusted partner, which is why 98% of organizations who work with the firm for the first time end up work with us again and again. As such, our proven method of delivering information technology professionals and services has garnered QED National a reputation for delivering the highest quality IT consulting services in the industry.

If you’re interested in learning more about QED National’s services, please contact us at (212) 481-6868 or [email protected].