The second annual State of Cloud Report, released by Pluralsight, compiles survey results from more than 1,000 technologists and leaders in the United States, Europe, Australia and India on the most current trends and challenges in cloud strategy and learning. 

Findings reveal a large multicloud skills gap, underscoring how critical cloud skills development is for organizations to ensure the multicloud reward outweighs the risk.

In 2023, multicloud strategies are becoming increasingly commonplace, with more than 65% of organizations currently operating within multicloud environments and another 20% saying they’re actively pursuing an additional cloud platform for their cloud environment.

However, in the rush toward multicloud architectures, many organizations are finding themselves underprepared and lacking resources to succeed. 

Key report highlights 

• 20% of organizations have defined a cloud security strategy while another 28% are working to build one. 
• 9% of organization have extensive experience with more than one cloud provider.
• 71% of leaders expect their cloud budgets to increase over the next 12 months and 74% of leaders expect their cloud skills development budgets to increase in parallel.  

The report also shows the top in-demand skills and skills gaps across cloud roles in 2023:

•  Artificial intelligence and machine learning skills are the most in-demand cloud skills (23%) in 2023, up from 16% in 2023. In last year’s State of Cloud Report, data analytics skills were the most in-demand (33%), but fewer technologists (18%) ranked it as an in-demand skill in 2023.
• The largest cloud skills gaps exist in data, analytics, engineering and storage (42%), followed by security and governance (37%). In 2022, automation and DevOps were cited as the most glaring skills gaps (30%).