Is There a Shortage of Cloud Engineers?
When new technologies emerge, new employment opportunities seem to follow. The world of cloud computing has opened up a plethora of highly skilled, high paying job opportunities. Unfortunately for employers, applicants seem to be lacking when it comes to cloud computing training and experience. This is a strange phenomenon because it seems as if cloud technology as a whole is rapidly out pacing the traditional learning options available for those wanting to learn and train on the cloud.
Surveys conducted by ScienceLogic seem to back up this theory of there being a shortage of cloud engineers. When ScienceLogic polled 1,000 IT pros, they found that nearly half of those who responded said that their current skill set may not be sufficient enough to adequately do the tasks associated with their job within the next 12 months. The US federal government has made several news headlines in regards to their CloudFirst initiative. While federal agencies are thrilled about implementing the cloud, much of the cloud implementation projects are currently behind schedule.
Contrary to popular belief, funding isn’t the problem with the federal cloud projects. Finding qualified individuals to actually build out the private cloud infrastructure has been the hold up. Accenture’s research shows that out of over 280 polled federal IT managers, only 10% of them have been able to migrate their workloads into the cloud.
What are some of the hot skills that employers are seeking? According to job seeking websites and data gathered from Google Trends, Open Stack has steadily risen in popularity since 2011. Since the project has rapidly matured, many prospective IT students have to learn about the system on their own. On the plus side, there is treasure trove of free information available to those who wish to learn all about this emerging cloud system.
RackSpace, one of the main innovators of the Open Stack project, has released a free training program called Cloud U. Once completed, a student earns a certificate that shows that they have a general understanding of the cloud computing world. Certifications such as these are an easy and cost effective method of letting you dive deeper into the cloud without having to empty your bank account.
