90% of UK businesses want to boost cloud strategies this year

Pluralsight has released its second annual State of Cloud Report, which surveys 336 technologists and technology leaders in the UK on the most current trends and challenges in cloud strategy and learning.

The study findings reveal a marked gap between the importance of the cloud to UK businesses, and the preparedness to work with and embrace the technology.

The rising role of cloud

In 2023, the cloud continues to become more important to UK business leaders, with 62% of organisations planning to increase cloud budgets over the next twelve months, despite ongoing economic pressures.

As well as more investment, UK businesses are also working to get their cloud strategy ‘just right’, to make it as effective as possible. The report reveals that 90% of UK businesses are making changes to their cloud strategies – from migrating to new cloud providers (21%) to moving between on-prem and cloud (20%).

Attitudes towards the cloud are changing too. Today, half (48%) of UK businesses think the cloud is more effective than non-cloud, and nearly a quarter (23%) see it as a vital technology to deliver more value to customers.

Layoffs have hit cloud roles hard – but these skills are vital 

Despite the importance of cloud technology to businesses, cloud roles have been impacted significantly by layoffs and restructuring. 36% of UK businesses have made layoffs this year. Of these businesses over half (52%) saw a decrease in cloud roles of up to 25%. 35% made cuts between 26% and 50% of their cloud team.

Within organisations that are still planning for future layoffs, a third believe that up to 50% of layoffs will be in cloud roles, and a quarter said this would be up to 75%.

Drew Firment, Chief Cloud Strategist at Pluralsight, said “This reveals a clear disconnect between leadership intent and execution. The cloud is vital for businesses and investment in it remains high, but experts in the field have been the target of many layoffs — and organisations now lack the skills to implement the technology.”

To compound this, many UK businesses still have a long way to go to become mature in their use of the cloud, with only 22% of UK businesses being totally cloud enabled, and 10% still only using cloud on an ad-hoc basis. Beyond that:

30% of UK businesses still have 50% or less of their architecture in the cloud 

Only 13% have a dedicated cloud team 

Only 8% have a dedicated cloud skills development programme 

Only 6% have all staff cloud certified 

Businesses must rebuild cloud skills to move forwards

In order to bridge the gap between where organisations want to be with the cloud and where they are today, upskilling in the most in-demand areas is critical. 

Pluralsight’s report reveals that DevOps skills are the most in-demand cloud skills (24%) in 2023, and that the largest cloud skills gaps exist in security and governance (17%), followed by data analytics, engineering or storage (14%).

A Case Study in Upskilling Success

VMWare, a leading innovator in enterprise software, is one example of an organisation leveraging a robust skills development program to drive multicloud success and, consequently, competitive customer value. In order to deliver the multicloud solutions it is known for and solve customer challenges, it needed a workforce adept in navigating multiple cloud providers.

“With Pluralsight Skills, we can ensure that our teams have the skills needed to get the most out of our multicloud investments, making our teams stronger, more efficient, and more agile than ever before,” said Jessica Thomas, Director Technical Education at VMWare. “Pluralsight Skills helps us achieve our goal to arm our technologists with the skills they need to deliver the best multicloud solutions to market.”