AWS re:Invent – Solutions for the Public Cloud Talent Challenge

At the first day of this year’s Amazon AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, many of the sessions highlighted the key challenges that companies are facing in effective adoption of public cloud infrastructure. Specifically, the topic of talent comes up constantly in discussions as a barrier that many companies are struggling to overcome as they proceed on their technology transformation programs.

Successful organizations have started to address the talent and expertise gap that they inevitably face as they increase their use of public cloud platforms such as AWS. For companies that aren’t yet far along in the journey, it is helpful to learn from earlier adopters. Three key actions that companies should take are:

1. Embrace existing training resources

AWS and the other public cloud providers have invested extensively in education, training, and certification programs. These programs cover broad strategic questions while allowing participants to go extremely deep in specific areas of public cloud technologies. They come with a formal certification framework that allows companies to easily align their employees’ training progress to performance measurement and incentive programs.

As a result, the level of investment required to implement a full-blown training and education program by any organization is very low. It is simply necessary for organizations to take advantage of all the resources that exist.

2. Embrace accelerators including Generative AI

The biggest technology trend in 2023 has been the emergence of generative artificial intelligence and large language models. While most corporations are very carefully experimenting with this rapidly evolving technology due to the risks that it can present, some of the safest use cases can help to fill the talent gap in modern cloud-focused workforces.

Code generators that use AI such as AWS’s CodeWhisperer and Microsoft’s Copilot can be a great asset to help inexperienced software engineers accelerate their public cloud skills from introductory to expert. These tools can be especially useful if organizations implement them in a way that allows a small number of internal expert developers to share knowledge with a large group of less experienced engineers.

AI-based tools are also quickly supporting the reduction of software developer “toil” via automated SecDevOps, setup and management of continuous integration and continuous code deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, and sophisticated security scanning and remediation recommendations, among others. By reducing the grunt work involved in software development, developers can focus more time on generating business impact. This means companies need fewer expert developers, and often fewer developers overall, to get the same amount of work done. In today’s resource-constrained world, that takes the pressure off of technology leadership to aggressively transition the entire workforce’s capabilities.

3. Use third parties strategically to gain cloud expertise

No matter how sophisticated a company’s technology team, there are always talent and capacity gaps that need addressing. “Borrowing” talent from third parties must be part of the strategic IT toolkit but should be done with intent and not as a reaction to a failing program or lack of comprehensive workforce planning. Effective knowledge management is also critical to ensure consultants and contractors transition expertise back into the organization, both to ensure ongoing opportunities for employees and to manage operational and resiliency risks.

There are many challenges companies must overcome to optimize the returns on its investment in public cloud technology. Talent is and will likely remain one of the key obstacles to scaling this critical capability. As organizations define their technology transformation goals, workforce and talent strategy need to be on the top of their priority lists.