Digital Reporter
Robert A. Vergara Jr.
With new technologies disrupting businesses, companies have no choice but to adapt to the changing landscape.
And as much as these advancements affect companies, they also have impacts on the labor force, with some jobs even feared to be totally replaced by computer programs. The automation of business operations made possible by technologies like artificial intelligence and internet of things, among others, impose a huge challenge to current workers to keep up and maintain having livelihood.
The only way for employees to survive is to up-skill or learn more complicated skills that will complement the use of these technologies.
If you ask Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of American e-commerce giant Amazon, there is one skill that will help current and future workers remain in the game: cloud computing.
Cloud computing, as AWS defines, is the “on-demand delivery of information technology (IT) resources via the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.”
“Cloud is now what we call the new normal. It’s no longer an experiment, it’s no longer an after-thought,” Vincent Quah, regional head of education, research, healthcare and non-profit organizations of AWS, told reporters in a media briefing during “Siklab Pilipinas 2018” on June 4 in Taguig City.
The three-day event provided around 800 students and 200 college educators with lectures and training on AWS cloud services.
Citing a study by World Economic Forum, Quah said cloud technology, along with mobile internet, is the top technological drivers of change in jobs in the next five years.
As businesses utilize the digital space for their operations, he said there is a wide use of and demand for cloud services, which results in a bigger demand for “cloud talent.”
“When you talk to most companies, it is [no longer about] why they should use cloud, but when they should use it,” he said.
AWS, for instance, currently provides cloud computing services to big companies and institutions like Airbnb, General Electrics, Netflix, NASA, and IMDb, to name a few.
The wide use of its cloud computing services also reflected in the profits of the company. AWS generated revenue worth $5.44 billion in the first quarter of 2018, a 49% increase year-on-year.
He added that it is also on top of LinkedIn’s list of most demanded skills since 2015. Certified AWS architects and developers, according to him, can receive an average salary of more than $100,000.
Education
A big role of preparing the next generation of workforce lies at the hands of the academe.
Educators, Quah said, should be equipped with proper knowledge and training to teach cloud computing courses and guide students in developing the country’s pool of cloud talents.
But according to him, learning cloud computing does not require skills in IT as it only requires “curiosity.”
“It’s not all about the IT skills. It’s really all about the ideas, what they can do with the technology.”
“As long as you are curious and you want to learn about certain things. This attribute is so critical because the world is gonna change so rapidly in the next few years and you don’t know what’s gonna happen so you want [people] to have that attribute, to want to learn.”
