Cloud Skills Lacking

Partners and their customers just don’t have enough cloud-skilled people, Troutman said.

“Last year, we did a study and 76% of IT decision makers said they have a skills gap and that’s up from 31% in 2016,” she said. “So it’s growing, and now IDC is even reporting that by 2025, nine out of 10 businesses aren’t going to have the skills they need. And it’s massive because they say it’s not only that they’re not going to have the skills they need for their transformation, but they’re saying it to the tune of $6.5 trillion of impacted business, product launches that are delayed, lost business, that sort of thing. So the gap is big and getting bigger.”

Partners and customers need people who have the foundational skills and can speak the language more for marketing purposes, Trout said.

“If they stay focused only on the technologies they know, when they don’t learn the new stuff, then they’re probably not optimizing for the environment,” she said.