Businesses in the United Kingdom are missing out on millions of Pounds in revenue due to one very specific reason: severe lack of cloud computing skills.

A survey by the London School of Economics (LSE) and Rackspace shows that 64% of UK IT decision-makers say the lack of cloud skills is leading to lost revenue. The authors of the survey estimate that the total cost is about 217 million British pounds a year in the UK alone.

The picture is quite… moody. 52% of the 250 respondents (mostly medium and large enterprises) say the lack of cloud skills is holding their business back. 67% feel that if they have enough employees with cloud skills they will have greater innovation. 85% say this will lead to a better return on their investments.

30% of the companies say strong competition for talent and inability to offer high enough salaries are the two main reasons why they can’t find enough employees with the needed cloud skills. 60% of the said employees do want a bigger salary. But 48% actually put more value in the opportunities to progress up the ranks in a company. 39% also want to work on interesting projects.

You need to do more

A separate survey by Microsoft also shows that there’s growing demand for cloud skills. It also shows that most managers see the importance in having the talent with the right skills, but they can’t seem to find and/or retain it.

One solution is not to seek for it, but to create it. This means investing in your current and new employees and training and honing their cloud skills. As long as they are interested in it, of course.

And since the cloud is being adopted more and more, now companies seek for even more specialized skills in the area. Skills related to open source, public cloud and specific platforms are more and more needed which is where the gap is at its widest.

Basically, you shouldn’t just wait until the right candidates pop up. You might find them too late. And there’s already a place where you can find a lot of cloud computing courses for all of the top platforms. Technology advances and waits for no one. So, be proactive and not only look for top talent, but create it.