Hurting From the Unprecedented Effects of Retiring Talent and the Great Resignation? Close the Skills Gaps With a Managed Service Provider
Best practices
In the midst of the Great Resignation, experienced employees are leaving the workforce. This exodus adds to the skills gap challenges organizations face as they take on digital transformation.
With 59% of CIOs reporting a shortage of skills in their organizations, hiring millennial employees to replace retiring mainframe experts has proven challenging. However, you can address this skills gap outside of traditional recruiting methods by outsourcing to a Managed Service Provider (MSP), augmenting internal teams and adding proven expertise to your organization’s workforce.
The skills gap problem
Mainframe technology is vital but lacks the appeal of programming, software development and data science to young IT professionals. These younger generations often think that mainframes are no longer relevant when, in fact, they are still core IT systems in many industries, including healthcare, banking, insurance and airlines.
But technical gaps aren’t limited to mainframe professionals. Professionals with cloud expertise are also leaving the workforce. When asked which skills categories their business lacked when managing their cloud environment, survey respondents answered:
- Cloud platform expertise: 41%
- Cloud-native engineering: 33%
- Security expertise: 32%
- DevOps: 26%
- No cloud skills shortage: 12%
The skills gap between incoming and outgoing IT professionals requires companies to assess how to best maintain their existing assets while embracing innovation. Unaddressed skills gaps result in decreased productivity, a greater likelihood of error and slower recovery times. These challenges often leave businesses behind the curve as they attempt to craft a holistic hybrid cloud strategy.
Navigating transformation with skills gaps
The hurdles of innovation without an expert partner
Migrating from the mainframe can be a significant endeavor, especially when considering rewriting and rehosting critical applications. Many organizations begin this process only to find deeply embedded business mechanisms that make a complete migration very difficult. Modernization combines modern platform capabilities with current application code to help maximize the impact of your mainframe. However, without the right internal expertise — or an expert partner — transformation initiatives often end in technical debt, application modernization challenges and non-compliance of regulated workloads.
How a managed service provider can help close the gap
The primary function of an MSP is to help enterprises reach their full potential while keeping their IT infrastructure and business applications secure and compliant. With an MSP to fill your skills gaps, instead of worrying about your mainframe’s viability, you’ll have the freedom to focus on mainframe innovation.
Hybrid and mainframe managed services provide the expertise that newly trained mainframe engineers lack. MSPs have experience working with businesses to support their IT needs, like managing cybersecurity programs and dealing with day-to-day technical issues. As a result, partnering with an MSP provides your business with the necessary skills to meet your long-term business goals.
Mainframe service providers also have experience working with various environments and applications, so they will know what issues to look out for, preventing problems before they arise and eliminating the need for lengthy troubleshooting. The provider will also be aware of the latest technology to ensure optimal system performance and system maintenance.
Why Ensono?
In the outdated MSP model, the environment was controlled by a limited number of people in a very controlled and restricted way, limiting the potential for change. As an MSP with an end-to-end tailored approach that improves agility and helps businesses achieve impact quickly, Ensono is changing the MSP status quo. Ensono embraces the new MSP strategy of facilitating flexibility, innovation and agility. We prioritize business transformation in product development and testing, processes and speed to market.
For more information, download Five Questions to Ask a Managed Cloud Services Provider.