Cloud Skills Maturity in Canadian Business

The new adoption of cloud services has accelerated due to a rapid shift to work from home, driving organizations to build anytime/anywhere access to applications and data.  According to a March 2020 IDC survey of Canadian organizations with more than 100 employees, approximately half had adopted PaaS (Platform as a Service) and one-third had adopted IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

As of September 2020, IDC surveyed these same types of organizations and found

• 35% were moving applications to the cloud for better security and reliability
• 28% were investing in cloud data management for enhanced utility and insight
• 26% were using cloud as a platform for digital innovation

IDC MarketScape Canadian Cloud Professional Services, 2021

Even though there is growth, Canadian organizations are consistently struggling with maturing their cloud competencies in house. This includes assessing which workloads to move to the cloud, migrating the workloads, and managing them effectively while taking full advantage of their new environment. The expansion of skills in cloud architecture, development, and management have not kept pace with the desire to reach greater levels of cloud maturity in Canadian organizations. 

Early last year there was an industry-wide focus on the anticipated impact of the skills gap combined with the decreasing half-life of technical skills. In short, the time it takes to become proficient in new skills is increasing while the useful life of those skills is decreasing, creating a significant obstacle on the path to cloud maturity. This is causing growing pains and impacting strategic outcomes for Canadian businesses across all industries. Digital strategies need a clear roadmap, with goals and objectives defined, to align with the techniques and tools required to reach the intended destination.

The trend is towards a hybrid cloud model, for most Canadian organizations, requires capabilities in multiple cloud technology stacks such as Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, AWS, and Google Cloud. For many IT departments, it is not feasible to invest in the development of all required skillsets – either from a time or a budget perspective. 

In order to meet the current business demands and plan for future growth, many organizations are leveraging partnerships with providers to meet their needs today and help build for future success. These partnerships allow the organization to benefit from mature skillsets, governance frameworks, and a wealth of experience across a variety of industries and technologies.

However, selecting partners for accelerating your cloud adoption and overall maturity can be time consuming and confusing.  IDC MarketScape has released an assessment of 10 vendors in the Canadian marketplace. IBM Canada, supported by ISM Canada’s consulting, architecture, and delivery teams, is positioned in the Leaders category for Canadian cloud professional services providers. ISM Canada was recognized by Microsoft Canada with the 2020 Impact Award for Tech Intensity. This award was received in large part due to our investment in Microsoft Azure skills across the entire organization from fundamentals through specialization certifications, showing commitment to leading the charge of investing in cloud skills, tools, and capabilities. 

Our team has spent years maturing hybrid cloud services and expertise, and we are recognized by organizations across the country for our offerings in end-to-end managed services and professional services. We have helped organizations on their complete cloud journey – from embarking on the initial planning and analysis, to building cloud native applications, and the overall management of their enterprise in a hybrid cloud environment.

Partnering with ISM Canada on your cloud journey will enable your business to realize the full benefit of your digital strategy, sooner.