What skills will IT need in a cloud world?

Soft skills

Analysts argue that skills like contract and relationship management, business needs assessments and negotiation have surpassed hard technical skills when it comes to managing the IT organisation's interactions with cloud providers.

“The IT organisation moves from being primarily a provider – which is very much an engineering kind of discipline – to being a broker,” Gartner research director Michael Warrilow explains. “This is more of a facilitator and a business role – but you obviously can't make that transition overnight.”

Brian Hudson, director of information systems at the Department of Agriculture and Food WA (DAFWA) sees a long road of skills development ahead as his agency mulls cloud adoption.

“When we embark on the procurement of cloud services, we [will] need to be experienced in that area,” he said. “Even if the services are provided by external vendors, we need to understand the challenges around SLAs.”

Reskilling

Training organisations are starting to respond.  

Dimension Data Learning Solutions (DDLS), for example, has introduced cloud-related training courses – and spruced up training for related disciplines such as ITIL for service-level management, and PRINCE2 for project management.

“The IT decision is moving outside of the IT department,” says DDLS CEO Mal Shaw. “Things like ITIL give you a guidance framework for cloud service provider arrangements, and can give you a common language to manage the various incidents and problems between partners in those relationships.”

“Cloud brings change to the way that organisations implement IT, so organisations are looking for methodologies and accreditations to make sure they've got a best practice approach."

Beyond new vendor certifications - (Cisco Systems, for example, now offers partner certifications such as the Master Cloud Builder Specialisation and Cloud and Managed Services Program) - the skills gap has been recognised by universities.

The University of South Australia has introduced a full university qualification around cloud computing – the Bachelor of Information Technology (Cloud Computing)

Indicative of the changing nature of cloud skills, that program combines conventional IT topics with accounting, management, problem-solving, information security and other topics.

But the three-year lag time for completion means such courses won't markedly impact availability of cloud skills in the short term.

See part II of this story - 'Nine paths to a cloud career'.