Only 4% of Aussie tech workers have significant cloud-related skills

Only 4% of Aussie technologists have significant cloud-related skills and experience, according to the 2022 State of Cloud Report from Pluralsight. 

The survey found that 82% of respondents are new to cloud learning and are looking to build basic cloud fluency.

According to McKinsey, cloud adoption is crucial to an organisation's success, with more than 1 trillion dollars in potential earnings in the cloud up for grabs across Fortune 500 companies by 2030. Yet, cloud skills gaps exist for many technologists today. Pluralsight's 2022 State of Upskilling Report, released earlier this year, found that 33% of respondents ranked cloud computing as a top personal skills gap.

"As organisations begin making heavier investments into the cloud, they must dedicate resources and time to ensure their technologists are up to the task of cloud transformation," says Drew Firment, VP of Enterprise Strategies at Pluralsight. 

"Findings from our State of Cloud Report show that most technologists only have a basic familiarity with cloud technologies," he says.

"Tech leaders need a cloud strategy that provides confidence and predictability in their ability to build cloud maturity at scale and that starts with ensuring they can upskill their teams on cloud technologies."

The State of Organisational Cloud Maturity

Pluralsight's State of Cloud Report gathered data on organisational cloud maturity and cloud strategy. Close to a third (26%) of Australian organisations rate themselves as having high levels of cloud maturity, while only 3% of organisations have made no investments into the cloud. The study also revealed that technology companies are more likely than any other sector to rate themselves as having a high level of cloud maturity.

There are many different ways that organisations can drive towards cloud maturity. In the survey, 45% of organisations say they design cloud strategies for speed and business value. Additionally, 39% of organisations are working to optimise for cloud-native with containers and serverless, and 38% of organisations enable hybrid architectures with distributed cloud.

Security is a top challenge to levelling up cloud maturity, regardless of the organisation's current level of maturity with 45% of organisations saying that security and compliance concerns are the number one cloud maturity challenge.

Key Trends in Cloud Learning across Australia

As the data from this report suggests, most technologists are new to their cloud learning journeys. Seven-percent of technologists report having skills gaps in fundamental cloud fluency.

For Australian technologists, the top personal cloud skills gaps are cloud security (21%), networking (20%), and data (15%).
Additionally, there are a variety of barriers that technologists encounter when trying to upskill in the cloud, with 20% of Australian technologists saying budget constraints and costs contributing to this. This data shows that employers' willingness to dedicate resources for cloud upskilling greatly affects the cloud-readiness of their organisation.

Disconnect Between Cloud Technologists and Business Leaders

Findings of this report reveal a disconnect between organisational and individual cloud maturity. Business leaders reported high confidence in their organisations' cloud strategies while individual contributors report feeling new to cloud technologies.

Despite employee skills gaps, growing cloud skills internally was not one of the top strategies business leaders used for reaching organisational cloud maturity. Only 18% of organisations use internal cloud upskilling as a key strategy for cloud maturity. However, cloud skills gaps are still front of mind for an organisations' cloud maturity, with 19% agreeing that cloud skills gaps in their business affect cloud maturity. Challenges arise when trying to balance organisational and individual needs for learning, as individuals desire personal enrichment and career advancement from training (22%), while leaders value outcomes that identify vulnerabilities (13%) and cost optimisation (214%).

Pluralsigh says in order to achieve cloud goals like higher levels of cloud maturity, increased cloud security, and cost optimisation, organisations need to be creators of cloud talent.