Cloud expertise is now critical and in high demand.
The cloud's spread across industries and areas of business can be tracked in many ways. Noting the size of the overall services market is a good start, but there may be an even more vivid illustration of cloud use: As Forbes contributor Joe McKendrick recently reported, companies are running short on employees who know enough about the cloud.
Training and recruiting McKendrick referred to several industry reports' findings in his assessment. Overall, it seems that the cloud has become a pervasive force, to the point where IT professionals feel overwhelmed, considering their current levels of cloud knowledge. They believe that they need more grounding in the technology to really help their employers succeed.
The call for more trained professionals is hardly surprising in light of the rapid rise of the cloud, but it could prove damaging for companies that want to accomplish the transition to hosted software as quickly and effectively as possible. McKendrick pointed to Microsoft data that singled out some of the roles currently posing challenges. These include data center managers and software creators, the personnel who will oversee the transformation of both infrastructure and the end-user interfaces that will actually bring cloud functionality to the organization as a whole. McKendrick specified that employees who can bridge the gap between business knowledge and cloud tools will be vital.
Two sides of cloud use The actual advantages of using the cloud can affect two separate but important segments of the enterprise population. On one hand, Platform-as-a-Service deployments among software developers can help them collaborate and get projects out the door. These professionals can work more closely with the operations department and move easily into accelerated deployment cycles if they replace their legacy technology with dedicated PaaS deployments.
The other group that gains is made up of end-users. They benefit from the results of the developers' efforts, delivered to them on a Software-as-a-Service model. Working with SaaS applications means patching is easy and automatic, and workers can access the tools from anywhere and share information effectively.
The fact that every section of a company can benefit from the addition of cloud mastery means you should not hesitate to add this expertise to your team. Failing to do so could eventually put your business out of step with the rest of the enterprise world. Conversely, climbing aboard the trend now may help your development teams create meaningful applications while simultaneously improving their distribution to and use among the rest of the organization, or even outside partners and clients.
Michelle Tackabery
An experienced content and social media marketing professional, Michelle writes frequently about the practical applications of information technology.