#Africacloudsummit: Paul Roy on what skills do you need to leverage the cloud?

“So you want to move to the cloud or rather embrace digital transformation as an organization? Moving to the cloud by just taking data to the cloud will not solve anything. You have to react to your solution first before implementing it.”

Paul Roy Owino, a technical engineering leader and ex-Microsoft developer lead for Sub-Saharan Africa, shared that sentiment during the Africa Cloud Summit in Nairobi.

Mr. Owino took attendees through the key skills that organizations want to look at so they maximize the value of going to the cloud.

Here are the skills you will want to think about or invest in as you move to the cloud, Mr. Owino said:

Business Value Analyst:

What business value are you adding to the cloud? You cannot move to the cloud because everyone is moving. You need to get a business analyst who can look at what value-add the business gets by moving to the cloud as opposed to staying on-prem.

“There are a lot of opportunities in the cloud as well as challenges that do not warrant you to move to the cloud,” he said.

Process Architect:

This is someone who will sit with you and look at the processes end-to-end. He or she should be able to advice you on how you will look at your next application and how you will improve your revenue. Through this they can advice which sections can move to the cloud and which can stay on-prem?

Market understanding:

You need skills where people can evaluate different cloud providers and solutions out there. Not all cloud solutions are created equal. You need to sit back and see what is available and have people who can do for you cloud contracts negotiations.

Security:

Security is very important; you need someone in the team who will help you look at the security from end-end.

Technical chops:

These are the people who roll up their sleeves and do the code. You need people who get to help in security configuration and how they can write some of the security concepts.

Analytics:

This is equally important. You also need a team of people who help you in being able to analyze the data and create sense out of the data collected before moving it to the cloud.