It’s no surprise; Cloud computing has firmly found its place in most organisations to date. Those that were reluctant to move to cloud and held back for as long as they could have now caved in and taken a bite of the apple – and they liked it. And those that invested in the early days are now looking to further capitalise on their investments and take the next leap of faith. And that’s evident in Gartner’s Cloud Shift research which suggests that more than half of enterprise IT spending in key market segments will shift to cloud by 2025. But can the skills market keep up with the pace of transformation?

In the 2021-2023 Emerging Technology Roadmap, Gartner published that IT executives believe the shortage of talent in the market is the largest barrier to deploying emerging technologies. Whether you’re just starting your journey or looking to continuously improve your existing cloud footprint, ensuring you have the right skills to support you along the journey is critical – trying to attract talent is half the battle, knowing how to keep it and what to do with it is the other half. Here are three core areas of focus to help plug the gap:

• Define Your Strategy – Stating that you have a “Cloud First” approach is not enough. Most organisations struggle to articulate the “why”, “how”, and the “what” of their Cloud ambitions. A clearly articulated strategy with defined principles and guardrails will act as your north star and give direction and meaning to your Cloud transformation journey. Without it, you run the risk of introducing shadow-IT through confusion, frustrating your talent, or worse, making no progress at all.
• Organise For Growth – Leverage a Cloud Centre of Excellence at the heart of your operating model to bring focus and structure to your Cloud ambitions. Build communities of interest and communities of practice to bring together common minds and help to crowdsource new ideas and new ways of working. Hire diverse, skilled resources to help accelerate your journey and use them to upskill your existing talent where appropriate.
• Get Help – For some organisations, the prospect of change and transformation can be daunting, and the need for a catalyst is often crucial. Bring in external support to help kickstart your journey and grease the wheels so that you can enable incremental value and start to see the art of the possible. For those who are further along in their journeys, external support can help bring in fresh ideas and innovation that may have been slowed down due to the pace at which you’ve been operating. Don’t underestimate the benefits of this!

Cloud is here to stay, don’t get left behind! In a future post, I’ll be discussing some of the ways cloud has evolved and my thoughts on where you should focus your efforts next. In the meantime, feel free to reach out for a chat if you want to discuss how I can help you accelerate your transformation journey!