Upskilling Your Teams

to Meet the Demands

of a Cloud-first World

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 1

Table of contents

P.3 P.4 P.7

Introduction Migrating to the The Case for

Cloud Without the Upskilling
Right Skills

P.9 P.12 P.15

Developing Cloud C-Suite Leadership Is Appendix

Literacy in Your Critical to Upskilling
Organization for Cloud Success

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 2

Introduction

Cloud computing is the Cloud migration will be key to remaining competitive

fastest-growing trend across Most enterprises know that the cloud plays a critical role2 in their digital transformation, and those that have
completed that transformation know that the cloud will be key to remaining competitive. Regardless of where
all industries as a means to
they are on that continuum, however, many IT managers are finding the lack of cloud skills within their
accelerate time-to-market, organizations to be a significant barrier3 to fully achieving all the benefits the cloud has to offer. Almost 89% of
innovate more quickly, them report challenges in recruiting the talent they need4.

and scale more efficiently. This problem is more acute than ever now as the global spread of Covid-19 accelerates the race to the cloud. The

According to Gartner1, more pandemic has forced organizations of all sizes in almost every industry to speed up digital transformation and the
adoption of cloud technologies5.
than 45% of IT spending will
Upskilling offers a reliable and cost-effective way for any organization to equip their current employees with new
shift from traditional solutions cloud technology skills that will increase cloud fluency across the organization and reduce the negative impacts of
to cloud-based solutions in thw IT talent drought. In this e-book, we will explore upskilling as a solution for enterprises seeking a faster and

the next three years. This is more cost-effective path to a successful cloud migration.

not surprising.

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 3

Migrating to the Cloud
Without the Right Skills
The high cost of migrating to the cloud
without a skilled workforce
Cloud positions are now
one of the ten most
Global spending on cloud computing is expected to top $832 billion by 20256. Yet, two-thirds of companies
today are still finding that their cloud migration and implementations fail to produce the ROI they expected7.
in-demand technology
And, more than 40% of them are finding the lack of cloud skills within their organizations to be one of their jobs today.
top three barriers to success.

Companies are not only struggling to find talented people with relevant cloud skills, but also to determine
the most important skills for each role. This is because the cloud now touches almost every area of technology
within most organizations and as such, includes a wide range of specialties. According to TechRepublic,
2/3
of companies report their cloud
more than 15 of the most in-demand tech jobs include “cloud skills” in their position descriptions8. migrations don’t produce ROI

As the IT skills gap widens, almost 90% of IT managers report difficulty in recruiting talent. Cloud positions are

90%
now one of the ten most in-demand technology jobs today, with cloud architects able to command salaries in
the U.S. ranging from $117,500-$196,2509.
of IT managers report difficulty
Filling those positions has become very expensive, too. The cost of recruiting and onboarding new talent in recruiting IT talent

40%
of companies find that a lack of
cloud skills are among the top
three barriers to success

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 5

can add 15-30% of your new hire’s annual salary, adding significantly to the upfront cost of acquiring the
Benefits of upskilling17
skills necessary for a successful cloud migration. In addition, new hires introduce more risk because they
come into an organization with no context for the business, which is important for a successful cloud
migration10. Considered together, these realities make it easier to see the cost-benefits of working with the
employees you already have.

Cloud migration has become a top C-suite concern today, and according to Accenture, speed is of the
essence. In its survey of more than 8,300 global companies, 52% of the C-suite IT leaders said that without +25%
productivity
some retraining, their IT workforce’s skills could be obsolete in just three years . In a technology landscape
11

that is ever-changing and evolving fast, this rapid obsolescence of cloud skills even with new hires can cause
many enterprises to fall short of their cloud adoption objectives. When it comes to cloud, there are enormous
opportunity costs as well with the lack of cloud professionals costing businesses up to $250 million per year12.

As a result, our customers in the IT industry are finding they need to invest in upskilling to13:
+38%
retention

• Achieve productivity faster

• Avoid high recruiting costs
•
•
Maximize their technology investment
Increase ROI
+20%
employee mobility
• Provide resilience to disruptions, like COVID-19

+94%
more employees trained

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 6

The Case for Upskilling
The case for upskilling

Enterprises that have made significant investments in existing, on-premises technology may find it harder
to achieve their expected ROI on their cloud migrations due to the significant amount of remediation and
re-architecting that must be done in order for their systems to run efficiently, securely, and resiliently in the
cloud14.
Training can have a
Upskilling existing employees that have familiarity with existing, on-premises applications can be a good significant impact
alternative to recruiting new, hard-to-find and expensive talent or hiring a cloud consulting company.
Neither of these options take advantage of the in-depth understanding of current systems and their
on cloud adoption,
business use cases that resides in existing teams. Institutional knowledge is particularly valuable when it particularly when both IT
comes to cloud migrations, which are smoother when people familiar with the existing systems are involved teams and non-IT teams
in designing custom cloud-based implementations for them and migrating those new systems to cloud
complete eight or more
platforms.15.
hours of training.
Businesses in every industry are looking to the cloud as part of their digital transformation. While some
can achieve great gains with a limited cloud deployment, many have very complex needs that require
a more targeted approach to training to provide a deeper understanding of the technologies involved.
Research shows that training can have a significant impact on cloud adoption, particularly when applied in
a comprehensive manner in which eight or more hours of training are provided to both IT teams and non-IT
teams16.

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 8

Developing Cloud Literacy
in Your Organization
Developing cloud literacy in your organization

According to McKinsey, enterprises must change their operating model to capture all the benefits that the
cloud has to offer. This means replacing the traditional model of relying on a centralized team to manage the
organization’s entire cloud implementation. Instead, the new model builds upon a culture of cloud literacy,
in which everyone is conversant in cloud technology and has cloud skills relevant to their roles within the
company18. This is another need that upskilling is uniquely able to fill. Having a common language around
Many companies have
cloud technology within an organization is essential to the long term success of a cloud migration. Even if workforces motivated
recruiting new talent was easy, doing so would still not achieve this. to learn, driven by their
ability to compete in
How to choose the right learning partner for skills transformation
the job market or the
desire for professional
Many companies today have a workforce that is motivated to learn, driven either by concerns about their
ability to compete in the job market or their desire for professional development. This is especially true
development.
when it comes to the desire to gain cloud computing skills, evidenced by the more than 300% year-over-
year growth in Coursera’s cloud-related course enrollments. Regardless of their employees’ motivations,
companies that seize the opportunity to provide upskilling to them will reap the benefits.

+300%
increase in YoY growth in Coursera’s
cloud-related course enrollment

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 10

However, a lot of organizations struggle with:
Three features to look for
• getting one clear plan for skills transformation in a learning partner
• selecting the right content for their learners to take
• engaging learners throughout the learning journey
• measuring outcomes.

In this section, we look at how precision upskilling with the right learning partner can facilitate skills Role-based
transformation across an organization. learning paths

It’s important to understand precisely what skills an organization needs to upskill and where those skills
are needed. Successful upskilling programs should be role-based and accordingly provide a wide
range of cloud skills offerings from course to develop the most basic cloud literacy levels to those that
provide high-level engineering skills19. Choosing an upskilling partner that has already developed role- Assessments and
based learning courses accelerate upskilling to develop proficiency where it is needed quickly . 20 hands-on learning

When working with an upskilling partner, you should aim to choose one that provides assessment
capabilities, too. A partner that can measure outcomes is critical for organizations to ensure their
individual employees are adequately engaging in the learning experience and gaining the skills they Skill development
need to do their jobs21. tracking by role and
level of mastery

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 11

C-Suite Leadership Is Critical to
Upskilling for Cloud Success
C-Suite leadership is critical to upskilling
for cloud success

Upskilling is cost-effective and allows companies to be more agile in acquiring the training they need
with providers that stay on the cutting edge of technology in response to rapidly changing market needs.
It’s not surprising that upskilling has become a priority for most IT departments, with 90% of IT managers
currently upskilling some or all of their employees22. Upskilling is a proven way to accelerate a successful
cloud migration and to increase cloud fluency within an organization. However, CIOs and CTOs must
provide a solid foundation for it to work.

McKinsey has cited “cloud chaos”—divergent approaches to cloud migration and implementation within
an organization—as one of the leading reasons cloud implementations fail23. To avoid this, CIOs and CTOs
must work together to create organizational alignment around the use of cloud technology. Identifying the
skills the organization will need to support its cloud migration and operations is part of achieving this
alignment and the key to successful upskilling.

Upskilling for the cloud also requires the full commitment from C-suite executives across the enterprise in
order to succeed. Given the rapid and continuous pace of cloud innovation, it cannot be considered a short
term effort. Upskilling must be treated as a sustained effort and part of an employee’s job24.

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 13

About Cloud & IT Academy
from Coursera

For teams driving their company’s digital

transformation and delivering the full value
of their multi-cloud migrations, Cloud & IT
Academy from Coursera is a platform-agnostic
skill development solution for the entire
business—building cloud literacy for everyone,
critical systems, security, and data skills for
technical teams, and reskilling talent for in-
demand cloud roles.

Visit coursera.org/business to talk to a learning consultant

today to learn more about the Cloud & IT Academy.

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 14

Appendix

1. Cloud Shift Impacts All IT Markets. (2019). Gartner.

2. How CIOs and CTOs can accelerate digital transformations through cloud platforms. (2020). McKinsey Digital.
3. Cloud outcomes survey: Expectation vs. reality. (2020). Accenture.
4. Tech leaders are hiring but challenges remain; security and cloud skills in high demand. (2019). Robert Half.
5. Digital strategy in a time of crisis. (2020). McKinsey Digital.
6. Cloud Computing Market by Service Model IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, Deployment Model (Public and Private),
Organization Size, Vertical, and Region. (2020). Market and Markets.
7. Ibid
8. 15 most in-demand cloud computing jobs. (2018). TechRepublic.
9. The 10 most in-demand tech jobs for 2020 – and hour to hire for them. (2020). CIO.
10. The total cost of recruiting a developer [Infographic]. (2016). DevSkiller.
11. Full Value. Full Stop. How to scale innovation and achieve full value with Future Systems. (2019). Accenture.
12. Cost of Cloud Expertise Report, 2017. (2017). Rackspace.
13. Global Skills Index 2020. (2020). Coursera.
14. Ibid.
15. Train to Accelerate Your Cloud Strategy. (2017). IDC.
16. 5 key strategies to upskill teams for the cloud. (2020). GCN.
17. Coursera for Business Enables Organizations to Expand Their Employees’ Skill Sets and Value. (2020). IDC
sponsored by Coursera.
18. How many people should you train?. (2020). A Cloud Guru.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Robert Half 2020 Technology Salary Guide. (2020). Robert Half.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.

Upskilling Your Teams to Meet the Demands of a Cloud-first World 15