Desperately Needed: More Cloud Training, More Cloud Skills

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Okay, just about everyone is convinced at this point — cloud computing is a good thing that can provide tremendous business value, if applied properly and smartly. The question is, who is going to make this all happen? Organizations are relying on information technology managers and professionals, to a large extent, of course. However, many IT people say they aren’t receiving enough training or support to move their organizations into this new computing realm.

That’s the takeaway of a recent survey of 1,000 IT professionals, conducted by ScienceLogic. The survey finds 50 percent of organizations will spend more on IT in 2014, investing heavily in virtualization and cloud infrastructure. At the same time, half of the respondents participating in cloud initiatives within their organizations say they need more education on the technology — their current skillsets do not adequately prepare them to do their jobs well in the coming year…

Skills shortages are already proving to be a show-stopper for many cloud efforts. A new survey of 286 federal managers by Accenture, for example, finds only 10 percent of U.S. federal agencies have been able to migrate significant portions of their IT portfolios to the cloud, despite the government’s aggressive “Cloud First” policy. The reason for this lag — not enough skills in the cloud arena. More than two thirds of respondents said their agencies lack the necessary skilled staff to execute its cloud strategy and 31 percent said they would need to hire at least one new employee. About half of survey respondents (45 percent) said training is necessary to develop those skills, estimating that cost between $25,000 and $50,000 per employee…

Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2014/02/12/desperately-needed-more-cloud-training-more-cloud-skills/

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