Video: The Cloud Skills Shortage

Cloud marketing tends to suggest that moving your IT onto shared virtualised servers makes everything simpler. It is supposed to be taking the skill out of IT, isn’t it?

Microsoft evangelist Simon May disagrees. Cloud changes the way we do IT, and just doing it at a new scale is enough to require a whole new set of skills. In other words, like every other revolution in IT, the cloud is going to create its own skills shortage, unless  IT professionals re-tool to get to grips with the new world.

The IT cloud

In the cloud a single action can affect hundreds of servers, so IT pros have to be aware of their new powers. They are also at the forefront of a drive for IT departments to function like real-world consumer-facing services – after all, tech-savvy users are going to threaten to move to public cloud offerings if they don’t like what they get from the IT staff.

So tech people have to get to grips with their business colleagues’ requirements more than they ever have before.

But let’s not reveal too many spoilers. Have a look at our video to see Simon’s suggestions for moving your career into the cloud.

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Peter Judge

Peter Judge has been involved with tech B2B publishing in the UK for many years, working at Ziff-Davis, ZDNet, IDG and Reed. His main interests are networking security, mobility and cloud

View Comments

  • I think this really underpins the value of training in this new, diverse (and often confusing space).

    The level of cross-division collaboration, which has always been critical to successful, powerful IT delivery is even more pronounced making the training of both IT personnel in technical and commercial aspects of IT important, but so too is the development of the business and commercial team's understand of the cloud landscape so that both can work together for the whole organisations gain.

    The CompTIA have a set of training and certification programmes that cover both high-level technical and business aspects of the Cloud and are worth a look - Cloud Training.

    Matt, IQ Cloud

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