82 PERCENT OF IT DECISION MAKERS IN SINGAPORE BELIEVE THEIR ORGANIZATION HAS LOST REVENUE DUE TO A LACK OF CLOUD EXPERTISE

82 PERCENT OF IT DECISION MAKERS IN SINGAPORE
BELIEVE THEIR ORGANIZATION HAS LOST REVENUE DUE TO A LACK OF CLOUD EXPERTISE

·  Big businesses losing $258 million – or 5
percent of global revenue – annually due to lack of expertise

·  68 percent of IT pros believe they could be
bringing greater innovation to their organization with the right cloud insight

SINGAPORE – 3 October, 2017 – Large enterprises in
the Singapore region could be losing out on revenue as 82 percent of IT
decision makers say that they don’t have the required cloud expertise. This
comes aslarge enterprises across the world are losing out on $258,188,279[1] a year as a
result of a cloud skills gap, according to a new report commissioned
by Rackspace® in collaboration with LSE academics.

The study also found that this lack of expertise is stifling
creativity, with 68 percent of IT pros saying they could bring greater innovation to their
organization with the right cloud insight*.

Beyond innovation and growth, 58 percent of IT decision makers believe a lack of skills
is causing a lag in their organization’s ability to deploy cloud platforms. In
addition, 70 percent believe they need to invest more in their
workforce to meet the developmental challenges of cloud computing.

John Engates, Chief Technology Officer of
Rackspace, said: “While the rise of Artificial Intelligence and automation may
cause some to think that human insight is less important, our report shows that
this is not the case. With technology and the cloud now underpinning business
transformation, the growing technology skills gap means organizations must have
a strategy to access the expertise needed. Those that don’t, will struggle to
be competitive and innovative.” 

The Cost of Cloud Expertise report looks at the wider implications of the
cloud skills gap, and provides a route for businesses to tackle the realities
of modern IT and the resulting skills gap. Consisting of research amongst 950
IT decision makers and 950 IT pros – as well as in-depth conversations with IT
leaders – in large enterprises around the world, the study uncovers current and
future trends in cloud expertise.

The realities of modern IT

IT decision makers are seeing the benefits of
moving all or part of their IT estate to the cloud. In fact, 36 percent of respondents say their organization has already seen a
positive return on investment (ROI) on using the cloud, with a further 56 percent expecting the cloud to deliver positive ROI in the
future.

Despite the benefits, both IT pros and IT
decision makers appear frustrated at not being able to use the cloud to its
full potential:

·  40 percent of IT pros are spending more time
than they expected managing daily cloud operations

·  62 percent of IT decision
makers acknowledge that a lack of expertise is holding their business back

·  74 percent of IT pros said
that deeper cloud expertise within their organization would help it increase
the cloud’s ROI

Most in-demand cloud skills

Nearly half of IT decision makers (58 percent)
find it hard to recruit the right talent to help manage their organization’s
clouds. Migration project management
(44 percent) and native cloud app development (34 percent) are the skills IT
decision makers find hardest to recruit. The main barriers to recruitment were:

·  Industry competition (48 percent)

·  The inability to offer sufficient training (43
percent)

·  The roles the company focuses on are not
appealing as they focus on maintenance (35 percent)

·  Company culture not being appealing enough for
new recruits (35 percent)

Looking at what IT pros seek in a new role may provide some pointers to businesses in the
competition for workers. While salary and benefits are the top priority (72
percent), having an opportunity to progress in the company (64 percent) and
having learning and training opportunities (46 percent) were also highly rated, showing that
businesses must think broader than pay rates to secure top talent.

However, with 66 percent of IT decision makers looking to increase their
organization’s cloud usage in the next five years, and 64 percent saying that retaining talent is a
concern, the challenges associated with recruitment are likely to increase.
This will only be heightened with the majority of IT decision makers (88
percent) saying that it takes “a number of weeks or more” to train new hires,
and 34 percent stating that “months” of training and on-boarding are required.

Will Venters, assistant professor of information
systems at LSE, said: “Put simply, cloud technology is a victim of its own
success. As the technology has become ubiquitous among large organizations –
and helped them to wrestle back control of sprawling physical IT estates – it
has also opened up a huge number of development and innovation opportunities.
However, to fully realise these opportunities, organizations need to not only
have the right expertise in place now, but also have a cloud skills development
strategy to ensure they are constantly evolving their IT workforce and training
procedures in parallel with the constantly evolving demands of cloud. Failure
to do so will severely impede the future aspirations of businesses in an
increasingly competitive digital market.”

Navigating the cloud expertise challenge

As part of the report, Rackspace and LSE have
provided advice on how organizations can navigate cloud expertise skills gaps
in their business:

Splitting the IT function into separate streams – Conceptually dividing IT functions into
two parts will allow businesses to focus on the dual priorities of
business-focused digital innovation and operations focused innovation – both
essential to helping an organization accelerate in a technologically led
market.

Developing a cloud skills strategy – Every enterprise IT executive should
adopt a Cloud Skills Strategy, which will map current skills in the
organization, map future innovation trajectories and changes (both within the
business and in cloud), and match these with realistic market analysis of the
available talent pool.

Full assessment of the cloud ecosystem – Organizations should adopt an ecosystem
approach to the provision of basic cloud services (for example pooling risk by
relying on providers). As a result, the dual challenge of both constantly
improving and significantly innovating can be greatly improved by relying on a
balanced pool of skills and competencies both within and beyond the
organizational boundary.

Mariano Mamertino, EMEA economist at global
job site Indeed, commented: “Finding, attracting and retaining tech talent is
critical to business survival, and yet it is increasingly competitive for
companies to find the technical talent they need as demand surges for such
skillsets. Our data shows that there is a global mismatch between the cloud
roles advertised versus those being searched by IT professionals, which could
accelerate the growth of a cloud skills gap. As this new report spotlights,
there is both a financial and innovation gap to be plugged here for businesses
globally.”

For additional analysis and insights, read the
full 2017 Cost of Cloud Expertise Report:http://go.rackspace.com/costofexpertise.

* This is based on
those using both public, private and hybrid cloud

– END –

About the research:

This research report was conducted by
Rackspace in collaboration with LSE academics and sponsorship from Intel.

With the support of the independent research
house Vanson Bourne, we conducted 1,900 interviews with respondents from the
UK, US, Germany, Benelux, Switzerland, Mexico, Singapore, Australia and Hong
Kong between the months April-May 2017. The respondent pool comprised of 950 IT
decision makers and 950 IT pros from organizations that used the cloud. All
respondent organizations had more than 1,000 employees from both the public and
private sectors.

A breakdown of the exact demographics below:

US = 300 IT decision makers and 300 IT pros

UK = 250 IT decision makers and 250 IT pros

Germany = 100 IT decision makers and 100 IT
pros

Benelux = 50 IT decision makers and 50 IT pros

Switzerland = 50 IT decision makers and 50 IT
pros

Mexico = 50 IT decision makers and 50 IT pros

Singapore = 50 IT decision makers and 50 IT
pros

Australia = 50 IT decision makers and 50 IT
pros

Hong Kong = 50 IT decision makers and 50 IT
pros

In addition to the survey, a team of LSE
academics conducted extensive research into the current debate within academia,
and the trade press, on cloud computing, process automation, and digital
skills. They also, during June-July 2017, conducted a series of interviews with
eight global enterprises within the target demographic for the project. A
further ten interviews were conducted by a consulting company. Enterprises were
given the option of anonymity to allow more candid responses.

About Rackspace:

As the leading managed cloud provider,
Rackspace has the expertise that many businesses do not have access to
internally. Our team of experts can handle the cloud on your behalf, across the
world’s leading clouds. We architect, migrate, secure and operate your cloud –
and help you optimise for tangible business results.

We’re also continually investing in our team
of Rackers – experts in cloud – to ensure that every business can benefit from
their knowledge and not be held back by a lack of cloud expertise. Businesses
can hire the expertise of 3,000 specialists around the world, without needing a
single extra seat in the office.

About Intel:

Intel knows the Future of the Cloud because
they are building it. The Intel® Xeon® Scalable platform offers the next
generation foundation for cloud services that can support your data-intense,
latency sensitive workloads with hardware-enabled security. Intel Xeon Scalable
processors offer businesses 1.65x higher system-level performance over prior
generation, and for growing workloads like Artificial Intelligence, 2.2x
performance over prior generation. From emerging new opportunities in AI and
virtual reality to next-level media and transaction workload demands, running
your cloud on Intel architecture provides the speed and responsive services you
need on a trusted, agile platform.

About Indeed:

More people find jobs on Indeed than anywhere
else. Indeed is the #1 job site in the world and allows job seekers to search
millions of jobs on the web or mobile in over 60 countries and 28 languages.
More than 200 million people each month search for jobs, post resumes, and
research companies on Indeed, and Indeed is the #1 source of external hires for
thousands of companies (sources: SilkRoad & iCIMS). For more information,
visit indeed.com.