Lastly, human capital requirements. What I
always like to stress here is that the
movement of on‑premises IT to cloud IT
requires a paradigm shift, and paradigm
being a fancy term to describe an outlook.
That's why I use the metaphor, a new pair
of glasses. What we're talking about is
just think of something like the example I
gave earlier in this module where you have
a database running in your local data
center and it's being offered by 2, 4, 6,
8 or more identically configured servers,
these could be physical and/or virtual
servers, and a cluster, which involves
quite a bit of infrastructure, quite a bit
of expertise to keep that up. And then
let's say you need that database to be
available in other regions in the world.
How is you going to do that using local
on‑premises IT? Using a cloud‑based
Platform as a Service, you can host your
database in probably a higher level of
availability than what you can offer
locally, and then geo‑scale that database
to different regions in the world, that is
replicate those databases literally with a
couple clicks of the mouse or lines of
code. That's what I'm talking about, that
when we're looking at cloud computing
versus local IT computing, it's going to
require you to look at it with an entirely
new pair of glasses. Now, this might mean
that your IT department needs to make some
new hires, specifically, you may not hire
a full‑time cloud solution architect, but
perhaps you do so as a contractor. And
this also means if you're going to retain
your existing IT staff, you're absolutely
going to need to help them with
professional development. This could
involve certification. All three of the
major cloud vendors, Microsoft Azure, AWS,
and Google Cloud do have certification
portfolios. If you're a Microsoft partner
organization, for example, you may be
required to have a number of certified
staff members. I find, I'm a little biased
because I've been in the certification
world for over 20 years now, but I find
that certification a) can be motivating
because the employee is going for a goal
and they receive their badge, and it's a
really nice thing from an ego‑boost
perspective, and also, honestly, just
being valuable in the marketplace
perspective as well. But studying for and
earning the certification will also, I
submit, force the person into deep‑diving
into the cloud vendor and learning those
skills, which is ultimately what you need, right?