In March 2023, we fielded the C2C Member Pulse to observe trends, skill gaps, and challenges in Google Cloud and how our members use community to enrich their cloud experience. This infographic highlights a portion of the findings.
Whether someone's role is in business or IT, there's no denying the organizational impact of constantly evolving and emerging technologies in the cloud and beyond. As the Google Cloud customer community, we want to ensure we're matching our members' needs in upskilling and staying on top of the latest in cloud.
Organizations are feeling the pressure to either cultivate internal skills to manage new products or risk falling behind their competitors. At the same time, employees are running their own skills-boost race against the demands of their employers for incredibly complicated areas of study. That's why we conducted a comprehensive survey to uncover invaluable insights about the tools driving transformation, the skill gaps organizations encounter, and the avenues individuals and companies pursue to expand their knowledge.
Digital Transformation with New Tech
Consistent with top focus areas, cloud infrastructure, data analytics and dashboards, and AI-embedded software are the top technologies respondents expect to impact their digital transformation efforts in the next two years. This mix of technologies appeal to cloud practitioners as well as those in roles with less technical acumen and are fairly consistent across industries. More emerging forms of technology, like IoT, blockchain, and AR and VR are all noted as a potential impact by less than 30% of respondents.
Interestingly, preparing for AI and ML is currently perceived as the lowest digital priority, with only 37% of organizations currently utilizing AI and ML tools from Google Cloud. However, it's worth noting that these tools are projected to become the number one choice for future adoption. As these technologies are relatively new, bridging the skill gap in training and deploying models is a crucial area of focus, with 41% of companies lacking in-house talent.
On the other hand, AI-enabled software is incredibly popular, being used at 56% of organizations. Organizations clearly see the benefits of AI, infusing their workforce with smart tools like virtual assistants or other line-of-business tools. Rather than immediately venturing into building their own AI and ML products and services, they're opting for empowering their employees with readily available solutions.
Skills Organizations are Missing
Among the internal skill sets that organizations find lacking, cloud security and data protection take the top spot, closely followed by the training and deployment of machine learning models and cloud architecture design and scalability. Because respondents expect cloud infrastructure to be the top technology to impact their digital transformation efforts in the next two years, we can expect these skills will be in even higher demand in the future.
How Organizations and Individuals Acquire Skills
When it comes to skill acquisition, Google Cloud training emerges as the preferred choice for organizations to enhance their expertise. That said, hiring - whether for permanent or temporary staff and either virtual or in-person consultants - is still a popular approach overall.
How and where individuals acquire or improve skill sets aligns with organizations' methods - Google Cloud training and certifications top the list. Notably, an equal number of respondents selected educational conferences and events, as well as massive open online courses (MOOCs), signaling that our community values both in-person events and online learning resources as valuable avenues for skill development.
Visualizing It All
Take a look at how the community ranks the options they were given for areas of focus, challenges, and who is responsible for making technology purchase decisions.
View image as a full-scale PDF here.
Get the Most of Community
As members of our community, your voices shape our initiatives. While we learned a lot about you collectively in this survey, we also want to meet your needs as an individual. Take a moment to update your profile today, and ensure you're receiving the most relevant and valuable content tailored specifically for your interests.
