Demand for cloud professionals to reach 2 million by 2025

With demand for cloud professionals expected to reach 2 million by 2025, India has the potential to become the second-largest cloud talent hub, according to a report.

The report titled Cloud Skills: Powering India’s Digital DNA was prepared by the IT industry body Nasscom in association with Draup, a talent intelligence platform. Tata Consultancy Services and Accenture were strategic partners for this research effort.

Currently, India ranks third as close to 608,000 cloud professionals across all verticals including technology as of FY21, the report said.

The demand for cloud solutions is growing exponentially, both in India and worldwide, leading to a higher demand for cloud talent as well.

According to Gartner, worldwide end-user spending on Public Cloud Services is projected to grow at 20 percent year-on-year (YoY) by 2022 to $398 billion. India’s cloud market is estimated to reach $5.6 billion by 2022, a 26 percent YoY growth, the report said.

Another Nasscom report pointed out that the global cloud opportunity will reach $800 billion by 2025. “India has the required ecosystem to take a big share of this market and be seen as the cloud solutions hub for the world. However, for this dream to materialise, India must get its cloud skills stack right,” the report said.

Over the last year, India saw huge job openings for cloud roles. The report revealed that there were 380,000 job openings for cloud roles in 2020, a 40 percent growth over 2019. “The demand- for cloud skills far outweighs the current supply and needs to focus across stakeholders on upskilling,” the report said.

To cater to the growing demand, there is an urgent need to upskill employees. The report estimates that with a more aggressive talent building roadmap, India can increase its cloud talent pool to between 1.7 to 1.8 million and in the process become the world’s second-largest cloud talent hub.

“India is well placed to do this by tapping into the adjacent pool of installed bases and also by targeting fresh talent from universities. Roles in traditional software engineering, IT & Networking, cybersecurity, data engineering can be targeted for upskilling due to higher skill overlap and upskilling propensity,” the report said. PTI