IDC Finds Shortage Of Skilled Cloud Workers

A cloud study conducted by IDC and sponsored by Microsoft found that there is already a shortage of qualified cloud workers.

By 2015, seven million positions will open up and 1.7 million were not filled in 2012 due to a lack of skills.

According to IDC, cloud-related skills represent "virtually all the growth opportunities" in the technology sector, but the available workforce appears to be a step behind. The U.S. currently accounts for about 62 percent of all cloud-related spending in the world, suggesting that significant opportunity in the job market exists.

IDC also noted that about 6 million Americans were employed in the technology sector by the end of the first half of this year, with chip manufacturing continuously shrinking and representing only 250,000 jobs. Technology job growth is expected to be between 1.1 and 2.7 percent annually, with the cloud sector growing at a faster rate.

Wolfgang Gruener is a contributor to Tom's IT Pro. He is currently principal analyst at Ndicio Research, a market analysis firm that focuses on cloud computing and disruptive technologies, and maintains the conceivablytech.com blog. An 18-year veteran in IT journalism and market research, he previously published TG Daily and was managing editor of Tom's Hardware news, which he grew from a link collection in the early 2000s into one of the most comprehensive and trusted technology news sources.

See here for all of Wolfgang's Tom's IT Pro articles.

Check Out These IT Videos

VIDEO: Cloud Services: No Buzz, No Bull

VIDEO: How Secure Are Your Mobile Devices?

VIDEO: What's a Virtual Phone?

VIDEO: Data Center Convergence

VIDEO: Quick Look - Intel S2600CP Motherboard

VIDEO: Big Data, Big Hardware, Big Software

VIDEO: Quick Look - Intel S2600IP Motherboard

VIDEO: Increase Security with Multi-Factor Authentication

VIDEO: Unified Communications - Embrace or Replace?

VIDEO: Bring It All Together with UC

VIDEO: Ed's Story - From Mainframe to Virtualization