Blame cloud skills gap on lack of breadth

Companies increasingly eye or make the leap to cloud computing, nevertheless that process is hampered by a lack of competent and comprehensive cloud skills among internal IT resources, said industry insiders. The cloud, they added, has altered IT's role in the company and to keep pace, new capabilities--both technical and non-technical--are currently in sore need.

Chris Morris, IDC Asia-Pacific's associate vice president for cloud technologies and services, said because cloud computing is different from the on-premise model, it has changed the skill requirements of IT.

"With cloud, we're now sourcing applications from outside [providers] to either supplement or replace the in-house application developers, he told ZDNet Asia in a phone interview.

The technical capability to write

"So during we have application developers who have the technical capability to write and test the code, what we as well need, and are when all is said and done supply, are people with a business understanding of their company's own nuances--what makes it tick--so they can customize those cloud services to suit their company," he pointed out.

According to Lum Seow Khun, business unit executive for independent software vendor and developer relations at IBM Asean, the skills required of a cloud architect are critical and currently lacking in the market, just as designing cloud computing infrastructure and application solutions.

A cloud architect must have strong knowledge of IT infrastructure design and implementation and as well the business application dependencies regarding the overall infrastructure and cloud system for both operational staff and end-users, she said in an e-mail.

The economic downturn in 2008

During the economic downturn in 2008, innovation training and education was one of first things that got cut from IT budgets in companies. Together, cloud was an evolving innovation, and "the jury was after all out as to whether it was an enduring concept or not", he explained.

IBM's Lum as well noted that cloud computing is after all in the early stages of adoption and will likely only go mainstream in the at once three to five years.

The timeframe

The timeframe, she said, accords a good possibility now for the tech industry, academic and government to collaborate closely to drive skills in cloud computing. To illustrate, Big Blue organized the IBM SmartCloud camp last July in Singapore for students, developers and IT professionals, with the aim of helping to reduce the gap between cloud implementation and the skills required to manage cloud.

The IDC analyst as well stressed that being cloud-ready is more than just cloud competency. It is as well about company leaders, especially the business managers, having a clear understanding of what cloud services can and can't do, he pointed out.

"Many times the services are heavily promoted to business managers as a way of getting around the CIO. That can cause conflict inside the organization, because what the business manager wants may not integrate at all with existing IT architecture."

Hence, instilling cloud-readiness means training the business unit managers about what opportunities as so then as costs externally-sourced services can provide, so they can better plan to increase revenue and profitability or reach new markets, said Morris.

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