Study says as of FY21, India ranked third with 608,000 cloud professionals across all verticals, including technology
The demand for cloud technology professionals is likely to touch 2 million by 2025, a report by National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), in association with Draup, Tata Consultancy Services and Accenture has found.
Titled “Cloud Skills: Powering India’s Digital DNA,” the report says as of FY21, India ranked third with 608,000 cloud professionals across all verticals, including technology.
However, the demand for cloud solutions is growing exponentially both in India and worldwide, leading to a higher demand for talent in this space. India had about 380,000 job openings in cloud in 2020, up 40 per cent over 2019. The demand for cloud skills far outweighs current supply and needs to focus across stakeholders on upskilling.
The report covers demand across key job roles in Cloud, and areas such as native application development, network virtualisation, containerisation, and service architecture are gaining significance among businesses. With security becoming integral to cloud, especially in the post-pandemic world, specialised skills in cloud security, security standardization, SASE platforms, identity and access management, and data encryption are seeing greater demand.
With a baseline growth of 24 per cent compounded annual growth rate, India’s cloud talent pool is expected to grow 2.4 times to nearly 1.5 million by 2025. However, says the report, there is an urgent need to scale talent further, with the right skill sets, so that this demand can be met. The report estimates that with a more aggressive talent building roadmap (over 30 per cent growth rate), India can increase its cloud talent pool to 1.7-1.8 million and become the world’s second largest cloud talent hub.
However, to bridge the demand-supply gap, skilling at scale needs to be the topmost priority. India is well placed to do this by tapping into the adjacent pool of already employed cloud professionals and also by targeting fresh talent from universities. Roles in traditional software engineering, IT and networking, cybersecurity, data engineering can be targeted for upskilling due to higher skill overlap and upskilling propensity.
This will require concentrated efforts from industry, government and academia to nurture partnerships and develop effective talent development roadmaps. Nasscom will continue to work with all stakeholders to realise the shared vision to make India a global hub for digital talent.
According to Gartner, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is projected to grow at 20 per cent on an annual basis by 2022 to $398 billion. India’s cloud market is estimated to reach $5.6 billion by 2022, a 26 per cent year-on-year growth.
Nasscom’s Future of Technology Services-Winning in this Decade report estimates the global cloud opportunity at $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.
