The Italian cloud market continues to grow. In 2025, it is expected to reach €8.13 billion, representing a 20% increase compared to the previous year. According to the Cloud Transformation Observatory, the main drivers of this expansion are artificial intelligence, which requires elastic and scalable infrastructures to fully express its potential, and digital sovereignty, which is prompting companies to reassess where and how their data is managed.
Regardless of the reasons, the cloud remains the key enabler of digital transformation, but its acceleration brings a fundamental question to light: do we actually have the skills?
Cloud skills gap: a real and ongoing issue
The cloud skills gap — the difference between the skills required to design, manage and evolve modern cloud environments and those actually available on the market — is one of the main challenges companies are facing.
The data confirm the existence of the problem: according to SoftwareOne, 95% of companies globally have suffered a direct negative impact due to the shortage of cloud skills, and in almost a third of cases (32%), this resulted in failing to achieve financial goals.
The picture becomes even more critical when looking at the entire IT sector. According to IDC forecasts, by 2026, more than 90% of companies will face structural IT skill shortages, with a potential economic impact of over $5.5 trillion globally. A significant share of these shortages will undoubtedly concern cloud-related roles.
The signs are evident, and while demand increases for cloud architects, DevOps engineers, cloud-native security specialists, and FinOps experts, the market struggles to respond with updated and operationally ready profiles, professionals capable of working in complex multicloud environments subject to multiple threats and potential vulnerabilities. To the structural shortage of IT skills, we must add the increasing complexity of the environments to be managed, a factor that further exacerbates the issue.
The consequences are clear: cloud technologies are being adopted faster than they can be effectively governed; internal teams are unable to keep pace; and external partners are asked to fill a gap that is not only technical, but also cultural.
Technology moves faster than skills
The cloud skills gap is not the result of a sudden decline in IT professionals, but rather a combination of structural factors that have made it more difficult to train, attract, and retain the right expertise in recent years.
- The first factor is the dizzying pace of technological innovation. Cloud platforms continually evolve with new services, tools, and models such as serverless, IaC, and DevSecOps frameworks. Traditional training paths struggle to keep up, and there is a risk that universities and professional courses teach concepts that will soon become outdated.
- Among the causes, some sources highlight an experience paradox: companies seek fully trained profiles without creating conditions for junior talent to grow. At the same time, some IT professionals struggle to transition to software-defined paradigms and DevOps operating models, which require a cultural evolution before a technical one.
- Another critical aspect is the gap between technical teams and management. Those who design infrastructure struggle to represent the business value of their choices, feeding an outdated view of IT as a cost center.
- Even when certifications are present, the experience needed to operate in complex multicloud environments is often lacking. Without a gradual and guided growth path, many professionals find themselves struggling with an operational reality that is far more complex and unpredictable than in the past.
Without cloud, there is no competitiveness
The consequences of the cloud skills gap directly affect companies’ ability to execute strategic projects. Business now depends on IT, not only in terms of operational continuity: the speed at which a company can adapt, innovate, develop new services, serve customers, or ensure regulatory compliance is closely linked to the strength of the digital infrastructure that supports it. If skills are missing, the cloud not only slows down a company’s evolution but could accelerate that of competitors, at least those that are more digitally mature and forward-thinking.
A project may be delayed or downsized simply because there are not enough internal skills to orchestrate an automation pipeline, manage infrastructure “as-code,” or resolve an anomaly. In other cases, more subtle but equally impactful technical and management issues emerge: misconfigured environments, excessive permissions, lack of monitoring, or disconnected hybrid architectures and cloud services treated as if they were on-premise servers.
On top of all this is the lack of cost governance, which makes it difficult — especially in public cloud — to predict, optimize, and control spending. The result is an underutilized and often overpriced infrastructure, which, instead of simplifying, introduces further complexity. Here too, a paradox occurs: a model born to eliminate the typical over-provisioning of the on-premise era ends up falling into the same trap, albeit for different reasons.
How to tackle the issue: invest in skills, inside and outside the company
Bridging the skills gap cannot be solved simply by hiring new staff, assuming one can even find the right skills on the market. Rather, it is a strategic challenge that must be addressed on multiple fronts: growing internal resources, attracting new talent, and partnering with external specialists who can provide qualified (and immediate) support.
- The starting point is undoubtedly to invest in what you already have. Investing in training internal resources means not only improving technical skills, but also strengthening the human capital that already understands the company’s processes, constraints, and goals. It is essential to properly design upskilling paths, pairing traditional courses and certifications with labs, practical shadowing, and mentorship programs.
- In parallel, hiring criteria should be reconsidered. Instead of looking for perfect candidates, companies should focus on profiles with solid technical foundations, curiosity, passion, and the ability to learn quickly.
- Attention should also be paid to managed services (MSPs). Relying on an external partner provides immediate access to specialist skills that are difficult to build in-house, reducing operational risk and accelerating projects. The best MSPs don’t just deliver services; they transfer knowledge, introduce best practices, and help develop a more mature cloud culture internally.
- To complete the picture, a clear vision of career growth is also needed. Those with key skills must be valued, motivated, and retained through managerial paths, not just technical ones. Over time, IT and business will become the same — it is better to be prepared.
To truly tackle the cloud skills gap, a paradigm shift is necessary, because it is not an IT or HR problem but a critical factor in business competitiveness. Only an integrated approach involving people, processes, and the right partners can offer a concrete response to a challenge increasingly seen within European companies.
