Cloud snowball outpacing IT professionals

The snowball effect happens when a small idea starts rolling down the hill, getting bigger as it goes until it is unavoidable. In corporate IT settings right now, one of the biggest snowballs thundering its way down the mountain is cloud computing. What started as a small software service with big dreams is now being used as the backbone of business critical systems of companies large and small, with more getting involved every day.

There can be a drawback to the snowball, however. As it picks up speed, it is flying past the IT professionals who are trying to keep pace with how to manage it. A recent article from CIO spoke with several IT industry experts and found that IT skills are starting to lag behind the technology.

According to Seth Robinson, CompTIA's Director of Technology Analysis, company decision-makers from all walks are starting to embrace the cloud like never before. More first-time users are getting on board and those who were at the front of the line are now integrating additional systems to the cloud. However, finding support for the solution is becoming harder to do.

"Companies are looking for folks with the knowledge of how to integrate cloud solutions with existing, on-site systems," Robinson says. "Migration, integration, developer knowledge of different cloud providers' application programming interfaces (APIs), are all skills that are in high demand."

It can be a challenge to find professional with these skills and bring them into a company. Instead, organizations should consider partnering with an IT consulting firm that specializes in the cloud and can bring these resources to the table.

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