29 June 2023
Pluralsight has released its second annual State of Cloud Report, which surveys 336 technologists and technology leaders in the UK on the most current trends and challenges in cloud strategy and learning.
The study findings reveal a marked gap between the importance of the cloud to UK businesses, and the preparedness to work with and embrace the technology.
In 2023, the cloud continues to become more important to UK business leaders, with 62% of organisations planning to increase cloud budgets over the next twelve months, despite ongoing economic pressures.
As well as more investment, UK businesses are also working to get their cloud strategy ‘just right,’ to make it as effective as possible. The report reveals that 90% of UK businesses are making changes to their cloud strategies – from migrating to new cloud providers (21%) to moving between on-prem and cloud (20%).
Attitudes towards the cloud are changing too. Today, half (48%) of UK businesses think the cloud is more effective than non-cloud, and nearly a quarter (23%) see it as a vital technology to deliver more value to customers.
Despite the importance of cloud technology to businesses, cloud roles have been impacted significantly by layoffs and restructuring. 36% of UK businesses have made layoffs this year. Of these businesses over half (52%) saw a decrease in cloud roles of up to 25%. 35% made cuts between 26% and 50% of their cloud team. Within organisations that are still planning for future layoffs, a third believe that up to 50% of layoffs will be in cloud roles, and a quarter said this would be up to 75%.
“This reveals a clear disconnect between leadership intent and execution. The cloud is vital for businesses and investment in it remains high, but experts in the field have been the target of many layoffs — and organisations now lack the skills to implement the technology,” said Drew Firment, chief cloud strategist at Pluralsight.
To compound this, many UK businesses still have a long way to go to become mature in their use of the cloud, with only 22% of UK businesses being totally cloud enabled, and 10% still only using cloud on an ad-hoc basis. Beyond that, 30% of UK businesses still have 50% or less of their architecture in the cloud; only 13% have a dedicated cloud team; just 8% have a dedicated cloud skills development programme; and only 6% have all staff cloud certified.
To bridge the gap between where organisations want to be with the cloud and where they are today, upskilling in the most in-demand areas is critical. Pluralsight’s report reveals that DevOps skills are the most in-demand cloud skills (24%) in 2023, and that the largest cloud skills gaps exist in security and governance (17%), followed by data analytics, engineering or storage (14%).
