RESKILLING workers is more urgent than ever. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation across all organizations, creating technology competency gaps in areas such as automation, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. Organizations are finding it more difficult to look for workers with such skills.

Cloud computing competency, in particular, is seeing exponential demand, driven by accelerated migration in the wake of the pandemic. In fact, a recent survey commissioned by Alibaba Cloud revealed that an increasing number of Philippine enterprises are turning to cloud-based technology solutions to navigate the new conditions, with more than half (51 percent) reporting they had adopted such.

This is supported by a Hungry Workhorse study that showed 100-percent growth in private sector cloud adoption and a whopping 200-percent growth in public sector cloud adoption over the last year. The adoption of cloud-based applications like collaboration and productivity tools, analytics, customer relationship management, and sales force automation grew by more than 60 percent in the country.

The financial services and the business process outsourcing sectors are leading the migration to cloud technologies. In fact, the banking sector has seen an acceleration in digital banking initiatives as part of its transformation strategy.

The unprecedented growth in cloud computing adoption has resulted in gaping competency holes. A search on Jobstreet and Indeed showed 203 and 1,073 cloud computing openings in the Philippines, respectively, with titles such as cloud engineer, cloud architect or system engineer with cloud certifications. Because of the huge demand, companies are willing to pay qualified candidates up to P100,000 per month.

There is indeed an urgency to reskill and retool our workers to meet the demand for cloud computing competency. One barrier to acquire the skills is cost, which can range from $100 to $300 to get certified.

It is opportune that Alibaba Cloud (https://ph.alibabacloud.com) launched its first data center in the Philippines last October 15 as part of an aggressive $1-billion plan to expand its Asia-Pacific presence. The data center will extend the reach of its services, including elastic compute, databases, security, machine learning, and data analytics to more local businesses across different sectors.

But more importantly, Alibaba Cloud will provide extensive training programs for IT professionals and developers in the country. Any professional can be Alibaba Cloud-certified for $0.01, a cost that’s easily accessible to all, via edu.alibabacloud.com/certification. Programs have been created to support innovation and digital transformation in the country as well as to help Filipino workers acquire new skills in this digital age.

The author is the Chief Executive Officer of Hungry Workhorse Consulting, a digital and culture transformation consulting firm. He is the chairman of the Information and Communications Technology Committee of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines, a fellow at the US-based Institute for Digital Transformation, and teaches strategic management in the MBA Program of De La Salle University. The author can be emailed at [email protected]