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Cloud computing platforms continue to transform the way in which organisations of all sizes manage and deliver their infrastructure capabilities. In a nutshell, “cloud computing makes computer system resources, especially storage and computing power, available on demand without direct active management by the user”. As the shift to the cloud continues to gather pace the major platform providers and new competitors are all competing for a larger slice of the action. The Skillta team wanted to analyze which skills were in most demand, because when it comes to technology, the demand for skills in a certain area is a great indicator of it’s overall success in the market!
First up we can see in the stacked area chart below that the demand for Cloud Computing platform skills was strong throughout 2018, with two spikes at the end of the year being primarily driven by a surge in demand in the United States.
We can observe in the chart below that there was significant growth in total demand for Cloud Computing skills in 2018 when compared to 2017. The largest markets in both years were the United States, United Kingdom and India. Around the world there was an overall increase of more than 250,000 new jobs requiring at least one Cloud Computing skill over the course of 2018 and it is expected that this growth trajectory will continue.
Interestingly when we analyse the number of Cloud Computing skills as a proportion of all skills, there was not a noticeable change between 2017 and 2018 for most countries. However, what did stand out was the significantly higher proportion of Cloud Computing skill demand in Israel in both years, highlighting the importance of technology to their economy
If we look at the volume and % change together by country we can see that the United States had by far the greatest volume of jobs in 2018. However, in all countries there was a positive change in demand for Cloud Computing skills, reinforcing the global nature of this growth area. The five countries with the largest increase in demand during 2018 when compared with 2017 were Pakistan (121%) Hong Kong (99%), Australia (56%), Canada (53%) and Singapore (50%).
Next up we will dive deeper and look at the individual Cloud Computing skills that were most in demand. The block chart below shows the individual skills that had the most jobs across all countries during 2018. Each block includes the skill name and the total number of jobs below it: as can be seen Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and SalesForce Cloud were the top five skills in terms of job volume.
A scatter chart showing both the volume of jobs and % change over time is a great way to identify outliers. As can be seen below the majority of Cloud Computing technology providers experienced a growth in demand. However, it was Alibaba Cloud that really accelerated its take-up over the course of 2018 with a 171% increase across all countries.
Now if we look at the demand in the larger markets for individual Cloud Computing skills we can identify similarities and differences in hiring trends. Below we have provided a detailed breakdown for the United States, United Kingdom, India, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Ireland. Governments are also actively exploring cloud options and given their preference to have their data hosted domestically it is important to understand which platforms are gaining the most traction in each market.
United States
United Kingdom
India
Canada
Australia
Singapore
Hong Kong
Ireland
Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the skill that was required by the greatest number of jobs in all countries. Microsoft Azure Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), SalesForce Cloud, and VMWare Cloud also had consistent demand across a large number of countries.
In terms of % change between 2018 versus 2017 the following skills showed the highest level of growth on a per country basis, while also having a significant number of jobs on offer.
United States: Google Cloud Platform (66%), Alibaba Cloud (64%) and Microsoft Azure Cloud (61%)
United Kingdom: Alibaba Cloud (111%) and Google Cloud Platform (35%)
India: Alibaba Cloud (930%) and IBM Cloud (68%)
Canada: Alibaba Cloud (208%) and NTT Communications Cloud (106%)
Australia: Alibaba Cloud (1250%), Microsoft Azure Cloud (79%) and Google Cloud Platform (75%)
Singapore: Alibaba Cloud Platform (515%), NTT Communications Cloud (130%) and Microsoft Azure Cloud (95%)
Hong Kong: NTT Communications Cloud (506%) and Alibaba Cloud (303%)
Ireland: Alibaba Cloud (300%), Google Cloud Platform (69%), Microsoft Azure Cloud (66%) and Adobe Cloud (61%)
As can be seen across all countries, while it is still trailing in terms of job volume, Alibaba clearly had a big growth year in 2018 and the company has identified Cloud Computing as a strategic pillar. Similarly if you are working in Asia then NTT Communications Cloud also recorded strong growth in 2018.
On the flip side, the following skills exhibited the greatest decline in demand when comparing 2018 with 2017. It should the noted that for the majority of the skills in decline there were only a relatively small number of jobs in both years.
United States: CenturyLink Cloud (-73%), Virtustream Cloud (-60%) and Fujitsu Cloud (-57%)
United Kingdom: Virtustream Cloud (-78%) and CenturyLink Cloud (-47%)
India: Fujitsu Cloud (-41%)
Canada: Virtustream Cloud (-65%), Fujitsu Cloud (-64%) and CenturyLink Cloud (-56%)
Australia: Rackspace Cloud (-28%) and NTT Communications Cloud (-24%)
Singapore: CenturyLink Cloud (-47%) and Rackspace Cloud (-47%)
Ireland: Virtustream Cloud (-85%) and Fujitsu Cloud (-50%)
The demand for Cloud Computing platform skills is clearly experiencing strong growth around the world. Skillta identifies high growth skills early at the individual country level to help people take advantage of these hiring trends. If you are a student, graduate or an experienced professional we encourage you to create a free Skillta Basic account which makes it easy to monitor demand for all the skills that matter most to you and to view the relevant job openings that match these skills. We also encourage governments and the providers of education services to use the Skillta Pro and Premium tiers to help align teaching programs to the needs of the job market.
If there are any skills you want us to start monitoring please submit them to us. To learn more about the Skillta platform, including the Skillta Hierarchy and account types, you can find further information here.
When combining all the detailed skills that are monitored plus location and time we have millions of different data points. If you want to examine anything related to employment skill demand simply create a Skillta Basic, Pro or Premium account and take advantage of our easy to use self-service analytics platform.
