We’ve seen how firms are accelerating their shift to cloud native in response to the volatile business landscape, and how autonomy is the key to that shift. We’ve also heard that cloud security, while continuing to be a concern, is being addressed—and businesses are responding with increased confidence.
But there's another factor in successfully moving to second-generation cloud: skills. Among firms' toughest obstacles to cloud adoption are skills gaps in the workforce. Of four areas—their technology infrastructure, their organizational structure, their workplace culture, and their workforce skills—survey respondents consider the latter to be the least compatible with operating in the cloud. Skills gaps also rank as a top obstacle to implementing a cloud strategy in more than one quarter 27 percent of firms.
Certainly, the autonomous enterprise allows companies to perform critical tasks with tools that are easier to use and with minimal human intervention. For example, the use of autonomous database technologies has helped Arlington Orthopedic Specialists, a Texas-based medical practice, deliver the same volume and quality of analytics instead of hiring five or six financial analysts, and double its patient count without adding any IT support or maintenance. Drop Tank, an Illinois-based loyalty-programs provider for gas stations and convenience stores, can scale up to 500 times the campaign volume from one day to another using an autonomous database, without having to employ database administrators.
However, the challenge of filling cloud-related skills gaps is only going to get tougher as more applications are developed in and migrated to cloud native environments, and autonomous technologies start to penetrate organizations. This reinforces the critical importance of developing skills to manage a new workforce—an imperative that intensifies when you consider that the leader firms in our study rank integrated DevOps as the key shift that will enhance their cloud capabilities in the years ahead.
“As cloud migration accelerates, organizations are going to experience painful shortages of the people with the skills to manage cloud resources or to develop cloud native applications,” says Imperial College London's Dr. Gerard Gorman.
But Gorman worries that businesses are not recognizing that shortfall or giving enough attention to the systematic retraining of their existing staff that they'll need as the cloud develops. “There is not only the technical know-how but also the budgeting, procurement, and business model,” he says. “In many respects, it is not vastly different from what’s been done in IT before, and as it matures, cloud native development is becoming more developer-friendly, but you have to give people the training, [the] space, and the time to become experts in this area.”
While skills gaps in rapidly developing areas of technology usually diminish over time as educational and training institutions build programs to nurture talent, businesses cannot afford to wait when it comes to cloud native and second-generation cloud. Fortunately, these technologies could also hold the answer. For instance, no-code or low-code development tools integrated within the autonomous database environment could offer a firm with little domain expertise the opportunity to utilize cloud native capabilities while remaining focused on its core business practices instead of IT, data, and analytics.
In today's global business landscape, organizations are assessing these opportunities with speed and urgency. As the cloud accelerates and automation proliferates, tools are becoming easier to use, meaning organizations can utilize technology to address workforce skills gaps or to free up human productivity for more-innovative and creative work practices. It may not be the pace that many had planned, but the coming of the second-generation cloud gives all organizations the opportunity to become cloud leaders.
What does this study tell us about how businesses can progress toward a second-generation cloud?
Shifting to cloud native is a key milestone on the road to second-generation cloud. It should not take a back seat to other cloud initiatives.
Exploiting AI and ML is complex and can be expensive, but leading firms are using autonomous capabilities to accelerate their cloud capabilities.
Cybersecurity threats are not likely to recede, but executives can be confident in the defenses built continuously by cloud providers. Security capabilities will increase with every generation of the cloud.
Move to cloud native without the necessary expertise, and you’ll risk impeding your cloud implementation.
The merits of maintaining applications, data, and other IT assets in the cloud have become crystal clear in the difficult environment of 2020. Cloud migration must not slacken.