The benefits of moving to the cloud are established—it’s no longer a matter of if but of how and when businesses will make the transition. IDC reports that 90 percent of businesses are using cloud today on their journey to becoming a digital-first enterprise. The pace of that transition doubled during the pandemic.
Moving applications to the cloud presents opportunities for efficiency, innovation and modernization. For some, it’s as simple as adopting a few SaaS applications to support company business processes. For most enterprises, however, it’s not that easy. Choosing the wrong path can lead to lost time and wasted expenditure. This is especially true for customers with legacy systems that require upgrading as part of a successful move to cloud.
Successfully transitioning to a cloud-led business model requires expertise in multiple disciplines that many companies don’t have in house. Over 80 percent of cloud leaders identify a lack of internal skills and knowledge as a top barrier to cloud success.
3 approaches to fill the gap
There are 3 primary routes companies take when looking to enhance their cloud skills:
- Train existing IT staff
- Hire the talent you need
- Partner with a managed services provider
Let’s explore each of these routes in more detail.
Train existing IT staff
Most employees would willingly upgrade their skills, especially in IT where technology is constantly evolving. It’s a viable option for some companies to upskill to the level they need to drive their own cloud journey. It’s great for employee retention and the business, but requires commitment, time and focus.
What are the possible pitfalls of this approach? How do you fill the resource gap caused by diverting your team’s focus to training? In a recent survey conducted by A Cloud Guru (ACG), over three-quarters of administrators said that the hardest part about guiding their employees through cloud training is balancing this competing priority with day-to-day work. That sentiment was shared by more than 76 percent of learners, who said that finding time to study was the biggest barrier to expanding their cloud knowledge.
Initially, upgrading skills may seem like the easiest course of action. But it requires additional time and resources and diverts the focus away from the core IT functions. And this will be an ongoing challenge, as new legislation and advances in technology require continuous training and upgrading. How do businesses keep up?
Hire the talent you need
The talent pool for cloud is growing, but so is demand. “We are in the midst of a talent drought within the IT market that is plaguing enterprise organizations, causing business bottlenecks, competitive disadvantages, security issues and compliance risks,” one expert writes. The skills in the highest demand include advanced cloud and security.
Highly sought-after cloud talent means businesses not only struggle to hire candidates with the right skill sets, but also face demands for higher salaries. Relentless recruitment results in high turnover. According to the recruiting company Dice, “65% of tech employees think they can find a better position“. So while you might be able to recruit the talent you need to support your cloud deployments, that requires a higher price tag and a focus on retention and employee satisfaction to keep that talent.
Partner with a managed services provider
Hiring a cloud managed services provider is the most desirable option for many businesses. Leaving the heavy lifting to a cloud managed services provider will drive the modernization and advancement your company needs to thrive in today’s digital economy. What are the benefits of choosing this route? Among the things you’ll gain:
- A seamless extension of your internal IT team
- An expert partner that is trained on the latest technology, cybersecurity, infrastructure management, AI and more
- Fail-safe compliance and adherence to security standards
- Guaranteed service-level commitment for infrastructure and application availability, incident resolution and disaster recovery
- Dedicated service desk/manager
- Ability to focus internal IT resources on core competencies
- Maximized return on your cloud transformation spend
All paths to cloud transformation require expertise and resources—physical, financial, human and intellectual. So why not trust a cloud managed services provider that is in a constant state of training, practice and evolution?
Sometimes the simplest and most cost-effective way to combat the skills gap is to outsource. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue to grow your in-house cloud expertise. But leaving the heavy lifting to your cloud managed services provider can drive the modernization and advancement your company needs to thrive in today’s economy.
OpenText™ Cloud Managed Services delivers the expertise, applications and infrastructure needed to support you on your cloud transformation journey, so that you can focus on the core competencies of your business and thrive in today’s digital economy. Contact us to speak with a cloud managed services expert today.
