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Cloud Computing Vendor Professional Service Offerings

Given the current level of cloud-related maturity within the enterprise, and the continued shortage of skilled software engineer talent, most CIOs and IT managers must rely upon the professional services of their vendor partners.

Meanwhile, many IT service providers will continue to consolidate their cloud computing engineer and architect headcount across regions while seeking to optimize global delivery operations though automation.

The latest worldwide market study by Technology Business Research (TBR) provides clients with insights to how increased adoption of cloud-based services delivery and solutions with embedded analytics has compelled vendors to pursue selective hiring.

Savvy cloud service providers have an emphasis on recruiting best-of-breed cybersecurity engineers as well as data scientists and sociologists, which will enable these systems integrators (SIs) to better position their offerings.

"Large SI vendors with established global delivery networks are leveraging industrialized delivery models to improve profits by using automation to offset the cost of retaining highly skilled talent," said Bozhidar Hristov, lead analyst at TBR.

On the other hand, TBR believes that India-centric vendors are betting on hiring new employees with basic STEM skills whom they groom through accelerated training programs and deploy as needed to maintain a lean cost structure.

Attrition is emerging as the biggest threat to vendor profits as a better economic climate and demand for cloud talent allow staff to switch jobs. For example, SIs with support and maintenance portfolios -- such as HP, IBM, Dell -- enacted headcount reduction programs to eliminate positions, which created apprehension among the remaining employees and led to an increase in attrition.

Profitability improvement will depend on a vendor's ability to attain highly skilled workers and/or train new recruits at the pace of evolution within the shifting IT professional services market. Experience with OpenStack DevOps Services, in particular, is a rapidly growing requirement.

Besides, cultivating a broad skills pool will improve vendor abilities to understand and address client business outcomes in creative and holistic ways -- particularly in data analytics, where wide-ranging knowledge of language and consumer behavior improves the precision of algorithms.

While sustaining a global delivery model is becoming table stakes for IT professional service vendors to maintain competitiveness, the increased commoditization of labor arbitrage is compelling them to invest in IP-based solutions.

This software automation enables them to bundle industry-oriented applications and infrastructure services, helping capture IT transformational opportunities without additional hiring.

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