rackspace

Is a lack of expertise stifling
your investment in
cloud computing?

According to new research from The
London School of Economics and Political Science,
the answer is probably yes.

IT is stuck operating, not innovating

IT Pros
IT Decision Makers

The cloud promises improved efficiencies and faster innovation. But it doesn't run itself:

A staggering 44% of IT pros said they spent more time managing their organisation's cloud services than initially expected, distracting their attention from more impactful activities.

Operation
vs
Optimisation

Managing (21%)
Planning (17%)
Optimising (16%)
Designing (15%)
Assessing (15%)
Migrating (16%)

75% of IT decision makers (ITDMs) lack trust in their IT team to successfully deliver on cloud projects.

Top reasons why ITDMs doubt their ability to deliver cloud projects

Inability to deliver to budget

29%

Insufficient cloud experience

27%

Lack of relevant expertise

26%

Siloed teams

26%

Inability to deliver to set timescales

21%

Lack of correct security clearance

15%

Businesses struggle to keep pace with rapid cloud change

IT Pros

39% of IT pros either agree or strongly agree that they struggle to keep up with the expectations of cloud technology

31% of IT pros believe there is a lag in their organisation's ability to deploy cloud platforms, due to a lack of skills available

65% of IT pros felt they could bring greater innovation to the organisation if they had the right expertise

IT Decision makers (ITDMS)

40% of ITDMs are concerned their organisation can't keep pace with cloud technology's evolution and demands

49% of ITDMs say a lack of internal expertise is holding their business back from increasing ROI from cloud services

46% of ITDMs believe keeping pace with cloud technology in an organisation of their size is tricky

Responding to the cloud expertise shortage

To avoid being overtaken by competitors, enterprises must develop a comprehensive strategy to gain efficient access to the cloud talent they need through a combination of hiring in-house talent, skilling up existing employees and partnering with trusted managed cloud service providers.

IT DECISION MAKERS

In-demand cloud skills

What skills are enterprises missing? Through our research, we've identified the cloud skills enterprises find hardest to recruit.

The cloud skills enterprises find hardest to recruit

35%

Migration project management

34%

Cloud security

34%

Native cloud app development

31%

Security

The cloud skills enterprises pay most for

44%

Database management

43%

Cloud security

35%

Service management

25%

Migration project management

What's holding organisations back?

5 weeks on average to fill an open role
in an IT team

32% of ITDMs said new hires require
'months of training'

13% the average percent of IT budget spent annually on training new staff

71% of ITDMs see investment in workforce development increasing with challenges of cloud computing

The main barriers for those struggling to find the right cloud talent include:

33% Competition for talent

30% Inability to offer competitive salary

25% Inability to provide sufficient training

Foreseeing the cloud skills of the future

Accessing the right expertise will remain a priority for both ITDMs (53%) and IT pros (48%) over the next five years

Future cloud concerns

46%

of IT decision makers are concerned about the increasing complexity of multi-cloud environments

46%

of IT pros are concerned about understanding how to use new technologies

What do the experts say?

"As IT innovation continues, enterprises will need to develop the means by which they can harness new expertise, and cease to be held prisoner by lack of it."

Carsten Sorensen, Associate Professor of Information Systems and Innovation at LSE

"Cloud technology has changed the way organisations operate for the better, but there is still one key ingredient needed to truly leverage the benefits – human expertise."

John Engates, CTO at Rackspace

"Finding, attracting and retaining tech talent is critical to business survival, and yet it is increasingly competitive for companies to find the technical talent they need as demand surges for such skillsets."

Mariano Mamertino, EMEA Economist at global job site Indeed.

"By leaving the infrastructure layer to the experts, we were able to focus all our IT resources on expanding our software capabilities to provide more opportunities for people to get the transplants they need."

Matt Ronin, Director of Research & Technology at National Kidney Registry

Learn more about the importance of cloud expertise

ABOUT THE REPORT

Rackspace commissioned this research to understand the enterprise cloud expertise gap in more detail and provide guidance to organisations on how to ensure it doesn't hold them back.

Our Methodology

This research report was developed by Rackspace in collaboration with LSE academics and sponsorship from Intel. With the support of the independent research house, Vanson Bourne, we conducted 1,900 interviews with respondents from the US, UK, Germany, Benelux, Switzerland, Mexico, Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong between the months April – May 2017.

The respondent pool comprised of 950 IT decision makers and 950 IT pros from organisations that use the cloud. All respondents had more than 1,000 employees from both the public and private sectors.

As the leading managed cloud provider, Rackspace has the expertise that many businesses do not have access to internally. Our team of experts can handle the cloud on your behalf, across the world's leading clouds. We architect, migrate, secure and operate your cloud ' and help you optimise for tangible business results.
We're also continually investing in our team of Rackers ' experts in cloud ' to ensure that every business can benefit from their knowledge and not be held back by a lack of cloud expertise. Businesses can hire the expertise of 3,000 specialists around the world, without needing a single extra seat in the office.

Intel knows the Future of the Cloud because they are building it. The Intel® Xeon® Scalable platform offers the next generation foundation for cloud services that can support your data-intense, latency sensitive workloads with hardware-enabled security. Intel Xeon Scalable processors offer businesses 1.65x higher system-level performance over prior generation, and for growing workloads like Artificial Intelligence, 2.2x performance over prior generation. From emerging new opportunities in AI and virtual reality to next-level media and transaction workload demands, running your cloud on Intel architecture provides the speed and responsive services you need on a trusted, agile platform.

Is a lack of expertise stifling your investment in cloud computing?