Reskilling, hiring and partnering to go cloud native

CSPs face a dire gap in skills to implement the transition to cloud-native operations and networks. They also face stiff competition for new recruits. So we took a look at some of the ways are tackling the problem, from hiring talent, to acquiring skills by reskilling and upskilling existing employees, training apprentices, and through partnerships in this extract from Mind the gap: bridging the skills divide on the journey to cloud native.

The dilemma operators face is explained well in numbers presented by Orange’s CTO, Laurent Leboucher, in a presentation at Digital Transformation World: Orange’s network organization has about 40,000 employees but has only about 4,000 people in software roles. “There is a huge gap in terms of skills that we need to…‘shift left’,” Leboucher says. In DevOps, shifting left means making testing a continuous part of the development process rather than a process that happens at the end (on the far right) of a linear waterfall process.

Orange is investing €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion) in a skills development and retraining program, and it isn’t the only operator pouring money into such efforts. In our latest Digital Transformation Tracker report (DTT 6), we highlighted ten retraining announcements by CSPs in the past couple of years. AT&T, for example, is spending $1 billion to upskill employees, while Deutsche Telekom has several reskilling initiatives to help nearly 20% of its workforce to become “digital experts” by 2024.

Reskilling varies among CSPs but usually includes training software engineers in Agile practices and reskilling network engineers with software, DevOps and Agile skills. It also often includes training technical and non-technical employees for new roles in automation, data analytics and AI.

In Sri Lanka, Dialog Axiata is looking in-house for new skills using a program called Analytics at the Edge. It is training employees across all divisions – even people with no tech background – to analyze, visualize and act on data. UScellular is reskilling in a similar way through a program called Technology University, which is primarily an online curriculum that helps employees develop new skills broadly and deeply. For example, a customer care rep might use the program first to learn about what it takes to become a developer, but then go deeper by taking classes to transition into the role.

Molding young minds

Brendan O’Rourke, Expert VP at Bain & Company and former CIO at O2, points to apprenticeship programs as the best way for telcos to acquire the skills they need. “The cheapest way to do it is to bring in young people through an academy kind of model or apprenticeship model. Then grow them, train them, give them good coaching and good leadership,” he says. In the UK, for example, O2 and other CSPs work with secondary schools to offer apprenticeship programs as an alternative to going to university. Apprentices learn on the job and can also earn a computer science degree while they work. The risk, of course, is that the CSP will spend a lot of money training recruits, only to have them leave to join a techco like Google. “It’s definitely a risk,” says O’Rourke. “But you have to think of it like a funnel: Some apprentices will stay and grow and become your team of the future.”

Perhaps surprisingly, UScellular’s Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer, Kevin Lowell, has found it easier to hire and develop the tech talent the company needs than the business skills and what he refers to as “human” skills, which include traits like courage, curiosity, confidence, humility and perseverance. Lowell says he is looking for technology leaders who understand how the business makes money and business leaders who used to be technologists – and they’re not easy to find. For example, technologists need to be able to understand how money flows through the company, what creates expense, and the distinction between an expense and a capital investment, because this knowledge can help them improve the profitability of a new product.

Relying on partners

Many CSPs, especially smaller ones, rely on their partners – such as vendors and systems integrators – to help them acquire the skills they need. For example, hyperscalers like AWS and Google often provide contract employees to CSPs. Even for larger operators it is difficult to compete with the hyperscalers for talent, so partnering with them can be a solution. Deutsche Telekom’s IT organization and AWS, for example, have built a skills program called J’DIS (Just Developers Doing Incredible Stuff). The aim is to reinvent the lifecycle of DevOps teams, from recruitment through team formation to maximize performance and speed of delivery.