Use the cloud to your career advantage

dubai - 37% of MEA organisations believe a skills gap is the main barrier to cloud adoption. This must change

As a business community, the Gulf region is now some distance into the digital transformation forest. Every day, every week, every month, we see more and more organisations recognise that the cloud and its benefits are not just commercial hype, but real-world, tangible gains that can propel businesses and public sector entities into previously unimaginable efficiencies. But to seize the advantage, technology industry professionals need to update their skill sets to include the cloud.

The UAE government, and many others throughout the region, have initiated medium- and long-term economic visions that place technology - and the need for related skills - at the very forefront of national planning. Government-agency technology platforms have been used to deliver apps and portals that have immeasurably improved information processing and service.

Digital transformation for enterprises is focused on increased customer engagement, empowerment of employees, enhanced operations and transformed products and services. To translate these vital pillars into viable solutions requires the kind of skills that are, to date, lacking in the region. A recent Microsoft survey found that 37 per cent of organisations in the Middle East and Africa believe a skills gap is the main barrier to cloud adoption. This must change.

According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR) Analytic Service Report, non-digital firms are twice more likely as digital leaders to cite a lack of digital skills as a barrier over the next three years (49 per cent versus 21 per cent). There's a huge gap in skills for both user-experience design expertise (68 per cent of digital leaders have this skill compared with only 11 per cent of non-digitals and 39 per cent of hybrids) and specialised data skills like data science and data engineering (62 per cent versus 20 per cent and 46 per cent, respectively).

HBR also states that the skills 89 per cent of respondents deem most critical for success in 2020 are the ability of all professionals to work with data and analytics and, the ability to collaborate with a variety of people and organisations. For tech pros, there is a lot of incentive in cloud upskilling. When the Microsoft survey looked at businesses around the world, it found a significant jump in the salaries commanded by cloud professionals, as companies began recruitment drives for their digital transformation projects. Amid the emerging constraints of the petrochemical price dip, public and private sector entities are focused on doing more with less. That is one of cloud computing's specialities and regional companies beginning to realise that. And as a surge in demand for cloud professionals grows, so will their remuneration. Where cloud skills are concerned, there has never been a better time to get on board the train.

In 2015, the IDC predicted that more than a third of IT positions worldwide will be cloud related by 2020. Its analysts also warned that the cloud-readiness of IT professionals - or lack thereof - would start to impact operations. They further claimed global IT employment will grow about four per cent every year to 2020, and that all growth will be concentrated in cloud-related positions. So, trained cloud professionals are indispensable in the digitally transformed future. The competitive edge of governments and enterprises is at stake, and societies and customers are waiting. Cloud providers enjoy huge economies of scale and can provide security and other services more effectively than their customers can do on their own. More with less. Advanced machine learning, business intelligence and analytics solutions can reinvent operational models. More with less; natural-language platforms can enhance customer service through chat-bots. More with less; and at the heart of these more-with-less efficiencies lies the cloud specialist.

A Microsoft-sponsored IDC whitepaper reveals global demand for cloud-ready professionals will continue to surge, to create as many as seven million cloud-related jobs worldwide. As far back as 2012, some 1.7 million cloud-related positions were available, but the survey showed that recruiters were unable to fill them, due to a lack of certified skills among candidates.

Recruiters and employers alike are forever saying that training is the wisest investment you can make in yourself. Being in a position to save your organisation trouble or money is what makes a successful career. To that end, joining the cloud revolution is one of the best moves an IT professional can make.

The writer is cloud and enterprise lead at Microsoft Gulf. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.