Closing the Cloud Skills Gap will Secure Business Growth
The public cloud has immense capabilities for the telecommunications industry, as it stands to help them innovate and have a competitive advantage. Yet, whilst there are benefits to adopting the cloud, managing these architectures is much more complex than perceived.
As IT leaders find themselves confronted with a range of cloud-related challenges, their IT teams are struggling to keep up with demand whilst not having the adequate skills to meet requirements that their business expects of them.
“We are currently witnessing a widening cloud skills gap that is starting to resemble a chasm,” shares Neil Neil Templeton, Senior Vice President in Marketing at Console Connect. “Indeed, the glaring shortage of skilled professionals with cloud computing expertise now poses a critical challenge for enterprises”
Console Connect: Addressing the cloud crisis
The cloud remains critical for digital transformation, but many companies are facing a digital skills shortage that is resulting in them falling behind their competitors. In the US alone, the digital skills gap is projected to cost the economy up to US$975bn in annual GDP by 2028, according to Neil.
“93% of businesses in the UK have reported a digital skills shortage, costing an estimated £5.69 billion (US$7.23bn) a year,” he says. “Europe is struggling too, with one in three people working on the continent said to lack basic digital skills. All told, the global economy could stand to lose US$11.5tn in cumulative GDP.”
As demand for cloud-focused skills continues to surge, some businesses are turning to a convergence of skills within their workforce.
“In this scenario, a network engineer will be upskilled to learn about coding while a software engineer will be upskilled to learn about networks,” Neil explains. “While this solution may suffice in the short term, it will surely lead to serious complications down the road.
“Unique skills such as Python scripting, WAN engineering, and data centre network engineering are not for the faint of heart. Neither is security and compliance, which requires up-to-date regulatory knowledge.”
Improving multi-cloud connectivity
Neil explains that more than 90% of companies worldwide are currently using cloud services from leading providers, which include AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.However, the number of businesses choosing to use multiple cloud services has grown in recent years alongside direct cloud connectivity.
Direct cloud connectivity bypasses the public internet and establishes a dedicated and private connection to a cloud provider’s services.
“It is secure, highly dependable and offers greater bandwidth throughput to support mission-critical tasks such as large-scale data transfers and real-time analytics,” Neil says. “These private connections are now available in very flexible, temporary forms, without the ‘lock-in’ or hard-to-change bandwidth commitments of old.
“However, understanding the nuances of multi-cloud and direct connectivity models can be dauntingly complex. When you factor in all these technical requirements, and then couple them with the worryingly high IT turnover rates, you could be forgiven for thinking the cloud problem is insurmountable.”
Simplifying cloud management
In response, consumption-driven network platforms are emerging as a way for businesses to enhance their cloud operations. In other words, they are doing more with less.
Neil explains that network-as-a-service (NaaS) is providing companies with a resilient and efficient solution to their cloud skills shortage issues.
“The beauty of this subscription approach is that it significantly reduces the technical and complex bottlenecks while allowing you to take full advantage of a plethora of cloud services of your choosing,” he says. “A trusted NaaS provider will have already embedded their platform with the latest application programming interfaces (APIs) which will enable your business to integrate operations and deliver a flawless user experience without your IT team needing to constantly monitor API endpoints, which is a rarified skill by itself.”
He adds: “As for cloud management, your business will have total visibility to all your cloud connections from a user-friendly dashboard, allowing you to switch-up performance on demand. Meanwhile, all your troubleshooting and maintenance needs are taken care of 24/7 by an expert team of engineers.
“This isn’t to say that NaaS is going to take away jobs, but rather it will empower your IT team to focus their attention on business-critical goals in the knowledge that your cloud operations are running smoothly like a well-oiled machine, with optimal performance.”
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