Dive Brief:
- Eight in 10 cloud leaders say a lack of internal skills and knowledge is the top barrier to successful cloud deployments, according to A Cloud Guru's State of Cloud Learning report . The company surveyed 6,108 cloud learning administrators and 20,000 individual cloud learners.
-
When evaluating potential employees, 87% of hiring managers said they "value hands-on experience and certifications over a university degree," while 82% said cloud certifications make a candidate more attractive.
-
Training hours devoted to Microsoft Azure rose faster than other vendors on the cloud training and certification platform, according to the report. In June, the rolling three-month average time devoted to Azure training grew nearly 800% year over year (YoY). By comparison, time spent on AWS and Google Cloud grew between 50%-100% in the same period.
Dive Insight:
With businesses more heavily reliant on technology to operate, upholding systems became mission critical, with special attention to cloud-based systems that enabled distributed work. Seven in 10 leaders say cloud adoption accelerates time-to-value for new products and features, according to the report.
But lack of training aren't the only obstacles managers contend with. Security is another top hurdle to cloud success, tied with deployment and orchestration, for 40% of cloud leaders. Almost one-third of leaders cite cost as a trouble spot, and another 8% grapple with cloud performance.
Cloud skills are highly valued in the talent market, and technologists in the making seek more training. Within cloud, technologists most want training in DevOps, Kubernetes and AWS, according to A Cloud Guru search traffic data. Azure training is also in the top 10 search terms.
Considerable growth in Azure interest speaks to shifts in the market. Microsoft Azure revenue grew 58% YoY in 2019, topping AWS's growth rate at 29%, according to Gartner. However, AWS owns 45% of the $45 billion IaaS public cloud market, by far outsizing Microsoft's share of 17.9%.
In 2019, AWS pulled in $20 billion in revenue for Amazon, while Azure brought in $7.9 billion for Microsoft, Gartner data shows.
Over 80% of respondents said they had training in AWS, compared to Azure and GCP at around one-third each. But desire for future training is highest for Azure: 54% of technologists say they plan to seek certifications related to Microsoft's platform.