5 Important Non-Technical Skills to Reap Cloud Computing Benefits

By Cloud Computing Outlook | Thursday, February 27, 2020

The strategic nature of cloud computing points out the inevitability of every single person in the business to get involved to unleash its true potential. Non-technical skills and roles play a significant role in successful cloud deployments

Fremont, CA: IT skills are important in the cloud market, but a company's personnel must also include well-rounded employees with soft skills. The highest demands in the job market are people who can combine their non-technical knowledge with the appropriate category levels of cloud computing knowledge and expertise. Here are five non-technical skills for cloud computing that IT employees inside a business should add to their resumes.

Accounting

Accounting was an unimportant non-technical skill before when cloud bills were relatively small. But today, enterprises regularly look for invoices that run into six figures per month. Cloud administrators and developers can benefit from understanding budgeting and other cost-related tasks and familiarize themselves with various cost management tools to track costs and predict future expenses. This will give the business better control and flexibility.

Project Management

The difficulty that comes with being a project manager makes the role an essential part of any IT team. A project manager should be proficient in planning and tracking, which are two vital skills in cloud computing. These skills are particularly important during a migration, which involves organizing and overseeing lots of moving parts. Project management skills are also helpful when assessing how much human labor is needed and calculating the cost of using various cloud services.

Executive Leadership

There will be no money, migrations, and new development on the cloud without executive approvals. CFOs and COOs sponsor, fund, and take responsibility for the success or failure of cloud projects. A lot of time and thinking goes into the cloud-enablement of the business, beyond the technical work generally associated with such projects.

Legal Understanding

Questions on tax regulations around cloud providers often arise, such as displacing existing hardware with cloud services. If the hardware is not entirely outdated, the associated tax benefit has not been fully realized. Hence, leading to a net loss that is higher than any savings that might come from switching to the cloud. Other legal issues include how software licenses are transferable and compliant to service level agreements.

Legal implications in cloud computing are not just about adherence and regulations. There is value in hiring employees who can provide general legal advice around cloud computing apart from the importance of knowing how to handle data. Those working in the cloud should have some knowledge of rules and regulations that applies to their work environment.

Business Skills

Business skills in cloud computing refers to individuals who understand the core business processes that are being automated by the cloud-based system. They are typically experts in a given business sector, such as banking, healthcare, retail, or manufacturing, who have moved into IT.

They know the system's core processes and can explain it to systems designers, programmers, and database analysts. They understand the best practices of their particular sectors and ensure applications meet their businesses' requirements. Without these skills, IT teams that start a cloud project end up missing core business requirements that should have been addressed upfront, such as compliance regulations that restrict the usage of personally identifiable information in a particular industry.