Industry, educational institutions and the government need to collaborate to address the huge skill gap that had emerged with the rapid growth in the adoption of cloud and newer technologies, an official of Amazon Web Services (AWS) said.
‘New phase’
“The world is going into a new phase of adopting cloud in a very, very large way,” Vincent Quah, regional head, education, research, healthcare and not-for-profit organizations, worldwide public sector — Asia Pacific and Japan at AWS said.
“We, at AWS, always say that the cloud is now the new normal. We are very excited about it. But there will be workforce implication,” he said.
“You have a lot of growth, you have a lot of customers… but where are the people to work coming from. Are we able to train people fast enough to be able to take on new roles, new jobs and may be even jobs that are not yet designed and defined and developed.”
Pointing out that there are millions of jobs in the cloud, Mr. Quah said as per LinkedIn data, cloud computing is the number one skill that the employers had been looking for over the last two years. “That is a very clear indication of what the industry is looking for,” he said.
AWS, which provides hours of free online learning content on technologies, including cloud and big data, along with cloud credits to students under its Educate programme, has started seeing increased adoption of the programme in India. “There are tens of thousands of students who are already enrolled in the programmes. The three most popular career pathways in India are software engineer, web development engineer and data scientist,” he said.
In India, according to The Belong Talent Supply Index, its toughest to hire for ‘data science and engineering’. “These are solidly supply-negative: there are more active opportunities than there are potentially relevant candidates.”
Globally, choices of career pathways are slightly different. In Singapore for example big emphasis is on Big Data. While data scientist, software engineer and associate cloud architect are the leading choices for students in the Asia Pacific and Japan. A total of 28 career pathways are offered by Amazon.
“We have very good relations with educational instutions because as customers they are using AWS… so institutions will be a major component to helping devlop skills for gradustes that are relevant to the industry. Government has an important role to play. It is not just about graduates, but also about existing workforce. There will be a need to for adult workers to reskill and adapt to this world of tech trends that India and whole world is seeing,” he said.
In India, International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, Common Service Centers Scheme and Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC) are already part of the program. Over 10,000 students have enrolled for AWS Educate through APSSDC alone.
While the AWS Educate programme is currently restricted to students, the company is looking at how the programmean be extended to working adults.
According to report by IT training and learning solutions provider Global Knowledge, more than two-thirds of IT decision-makers reported a gap between skill levels and knowledge needed to meet goals.
“Organizations’ priorities are cloud computing, cybersecurity and virtualisation; at the same time, IT decision-makers are challenged to find qualified professionals in those areas,” the report said, adding that the growing demand for professionals in these areas can mean higher salaries. “Individuals working in cybersecurity report the highest overall salaries; the average global salary is $87,580. Those working in cloud computing round out the top five, with an average global salary of $75,365,” it said.
