Cloud staff that is shorthanded or lacks skills can be a detriment to the business. Projects are left incomplete, security suffers and innovations are pushed off just to survive.
There is always discussion of a skills gap in the IT industry. IDC indicated that more than 90% of organizations will face IT skills shortages by 2026, which will cost them an estimated $5.5 trillion. Expect a significant number of those shortages to represent cloud skills.
Today, well-trained cloud staff are in demand. The cloud market continues to grow, and Gartner forecasted that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services in 2025 will be $723.4 billion, a 21.5% increase from $595.7 billion in 2024.
The implications of a skills gap for businesses can be severe. Cloud computing should provide increased security, agility and flexibility -- but only if properly managed. Failing to support a cloud deployment with skilled administrators who understand the latest security concerns and performance opportunities is a recipe for a mediocre deployment.
Consider the consequences of a faulty deployment, including the following:
Restricted growth and business innovation.
Underutilization of cloud deployment potential.
Competition for skilled cloud professionals.
Security and performance risks due to inattention, skills deficits or misconfigurations.
Missed financial objectives and opportunities.
The implications of a skills gap for businesses can be severe.
How are organizations addressing this problem? According to Karat's "2024 Tech Hiring Trends" report, two common trends emerged:
81% of U.S. engineering leaders plan to hire abroad, increasing competition in the U.S. but maintaining the trend of acquiring global talent.
28% of U.S. business leaders continue to prefer contract and freelance workers in favor of retaining permanent staff.
It's no surprise that AI continues to grow and evolve, too. Combine these unfilled cloud administration numbers with the need for AI support in cloud infrastructures, and you can see a problem forming.
In-demand skills
The fundamental problem includes two key factors.
Rapid evolution. Cloud technologies, such as serverless applications, multi-cloud enhancements and DevOps integration, and everything that runs on top of them continue to rapidly evolve. The combination of AI and cloud offers more career opportunities for multi-cloud experts, DevOps engineers, cloud-native application developers and experts in the business of cloud computing. These can include FinOps and cloud accounting roles.
Staffing. Organizations face challenges with the lack of internal knowledge of staff. It's tough to justify training people for unknown future initiatives when the staff can barely support today's existing requirements.
AI and machine learning integration with new and existing cloud applications.
Cloud AI services, like Amazon SageMaker or Azure AI.
Cross-platform, cloud-native and multi-cloud development skills.
Cloud cost, cloud-related business management and other FinOps skills.
Enterprise cloud business strategies.
What should you do?
For those entering the field of cloud administration, use these shortages to steer your career toward job stability and new opportunities. For existing cloud experts, focus any further career development plans toward these areas.
Are you an expert with AWS? Consider broadening your Azure skills. Already a VM pro? Expand into the world of containers. Tired of day-to-day cloud administration? Consider a move to the developer world to work with cloud-native applications.
And don't neglect AI. Hiring managers are prioritizing AI technical skills, with 60% of them hiring for AI engineer positions in 2024 and the number of roles increasing from 35% in 2023, according to Karat, with continued growth likely for 2025.
Consider using the following approaches to make yourself more attractive in the cloud services realm:
Formal training. Many organizations offer training on cloud platforms. AWS, CompTIA and others are all great choices.
Technical certifications.Certifications are a great way of showing specific skills and proving exposure to important concepts.
Self-paced learning. Many self-paced training options exist, whether directed by a training organization or consisting of a collection of articles, tutorials and websites you compiled.
Look to the positions your company is hiring for, and put yourself in a position to be a candidate for those roles. Other administrators might be willing to provide mentoring or other guidance to help along the way.
Damon Garn owns Cogspinner Coaction and provides freelance IT writing and editing services. He has written multiple CompTIA study guides, including the Linux+, Cloud Essentials+ and Server+ guides, and contributes extensively to TechTarget Editorial, The New Stack and CompTIA Blogs.
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