Resource on Demand

ROD was recently approached by the good people at Cloud Pro, who wanted our thoughts on how quickly people are adapting to new technologies like Cloud Computing.  Here’s a snippet of the article and the link to the full piece on their website.

Can we speak the new language of the cloud?

Cloud computing has created the need for a new vocabulary – and new languages. How quickly are we adapting to this new way of working?

It is perhaps no surprise that the ‘utopian’ world of cloud computing should throw up new set of programming languages. A new lingua franca was inevitable as software developers came to collude inside the fresh pastures of the cloud computing cloudscape with its untapped possibilities.

While cloud vendors have sought to pacify us with suggestions that software development methodologies and core technology principles translate ‘seamlessly’ to the cloud; the reality is that a whole range of new languages and systems tools has come to be and, as yet, not everybody speaks fluently in these new tongues.

Comparatively new names including Cassandra, Voldemort, Puppet, Chef, Map Reduce and Hadoop are starting to define the skill sets that by which we measure cloud competency at the individual coder level. So has the IT recruitment industry found itself on a blind curve heading downhill faster than it can manage? Furthermore, have programmers themselves recognised the new skills topography they will need to navigate – and what are they doing about it?

Back to school?

At the individual level, software application developers are of course responsible for their own skill sets. As such, they can take it upon themselves to ‘train up’ for the cloud by using online training tools and resources if they wish. However in practice, not every developer will choose to augment his skills, so inequalities in the programmer job market have become more pronounced.

“One thing we have always noticed as cloud recruitment specialists is that there are truly excellent programmers who excel at everything they do; and then there are average programmers who ‘just about get by’ and are sometimes carried along by other members of the team. But, crucially, when it comes to the cloud, this disparity is magnified and there is an even greater wedge between the two tiers,” said Theresa Durrant, operations director of cloud-specialist recruitment consultancy Resource On Demand Limited.

“We typically work for large global IT consultancy brands and our clients are becoming very demanding when it comes to skill sets for the cloud. This issue needs to be highlighted right the way back to the student level, or we risk the uncertainties of a job market suffering from a dearth of core skills. Aberdeen University has apparently started to offer MSc/PgDip in ‘Cloud Computing’, but this is a mere drop in the ocean in terms of what is needed,” added Durrant.

To continue reading this article on the Channel Pro website, please click here.