Overcoming the cloud skills gap to innovate in the cloud

Cloud computing has enabled disruptive business models like no other technology. It has spawned unorthodox, powerful companies such as Uber and AirBnB, and has evolved to become a mainstream, natural part of how business executives think. It’s widely accepted in the C-suite that cloud technology can deliver real transformation that impacts the bottom line.

 

With the cloud, companies benefit from cost savings and simplification of infrastructure. Although this is all applaudable in its own right, for companies that have made this move, it subsequently allows them to begin thinking about innovation. After all, the question now for many CIOs is not “should we move to the cloud?”, but “now that we’re in the cloud, how can we innovate?”.

 

There’s just one problem with all this – the much discussed ‘cloud computing skills shortage’ affecting the majority of businesses and impeding digital transformation. There simply aren’t enough IT professionals specialised in next-gen cloud platforms, and recruitment is a challenge. These issues are magnified in smaller firms, which have to compete with the same resource pool as larger businesses. Scarcity drives up costs to recruit and retain, with the UK’s STEM skills shortage reportedly costing businesses ?1.5 billion a year in recruitment, temporary staffing, inflated salaries and additional training costs.

 

While there’s no quick-fix, businesses can allay this problem by structuring to accommodate for a culture of learning. That’s worth exploring in more detail.

 

Years ago, a young IT professional might progress to become an expert in a particular technology, and he or she would become renowned for that knowledge. This idea of specialisation still exists, but companies more than ever need people who can quickly learn and adapt, and an organisational structure that facilitates this needs to be in place.

 

The cloud enables businesses to prototype and move new things into production at a rapid pace. To accommodate for this change in tempo, the IT skills sought-after by employers have become fundamentally differently. Scripters and coders who can build something automated and repeatable are the bedrock of this strategy. This means they need to be able jump between different languages: PowerShell that goes across into the UNIX world, or Python, JSON and CloudFormation.

 

So how can businesses structure themselves to encourage continuous learning and development?

 

First of all, it’s important to point out that simply having teams with large skill-sets doesn’t necessarily lead to greater innovation. What doesn’t work, for example, is when businesses decide to thinly distribute cloud skills across the business. Let’s say, for instance, that a company has a networks team, a storage team, and a ‘wintel’ team. In that example, what you’ll often see is company decision-makers trying to inject cloud skills into all of those teams. This is seldom effective, because the company has failed to adopt a DevOps culture, of which learning is at the very heart.

 

What organisations need to be doing instead is restructuring – creating pods of capability that are more business aligned rather than IT-function aligned. Those pods will have people with multiple, broad skill-sets, but will also feature individuals who are experts in one or two areas; we might describe these individuals as having ‘T-shaped skills’. With this structure, and with individuals like this, business can be more agile, and can drive innovation at a faster pace.

 

This format for IT teams also encourages learning, because the teams are inherently cross-functional. You have team-members who are subject experts on networks, while others are experts on data, while others might be cloud experts. Once these individuals are all working together and their skills are applied, they’re able to learn from each other. Learning can be enriched, too, if the teams are ethereal – changing from project to project – so that staff are constantly exposed to new ideas and experience.

 

To supplement all this, the business should consider leveraging the investment and support of a partner ecosystem. On the one hand, this might be cloud vendors, making investments with businesses around training and learning. On the other hand, it might also be a Managed Service Provider which can also be an instigator for change within business. When leveraged effectively, an MSP can be used to free up your staff and will allow them to focus on business innovation and transformation rather than firefighting IT issues or keeping the lights on.

 

It may not be possible to immediately remedy the lack of cloud skills at its root. The growing number of jobs in the computing field still far outpaces how many students are earning bachelor’s degrees in computer science and similar fields. And while girls are taking more A levels in science, technology, mathematics, and computing, they are still avoiding the subjects at university. Fixing all this would require significantly greater intervention and investment in schools and more energy on encouraging computer science, particularly amongst girls.

 

However, businesses can better leverage their existing resources to cope with the shortage. They can seek adaptable, flexible employees; they can restructure their organisation to encourage learning and innovation; and they can look to partners for support. What’s important is that businesses don’t succumb to the belief that a lack of cloud skills is irremediable. Ultimately, that’s a mindset that will lead the business to stagnate at a time when cloud is more important than ever.