How Data Center Skills Gap Causes Cloud Outages
Computerworld, Monday, June 30th, 2025
Your weekly round-up of the questions asked by readers of CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World explores how the skills gap is causing issues in data centers, finds a use for Google's Gemini, and outlines the perils of shadow IT.
Recently we reported on a global Microsoft 365 outage that disrupted Teams and Exchange services. We said that aggressive traffic rerouting was blamed for service failures; with experts warning of architectural brittleness and rising cloud fragility.
It was that fragility that caught the attention of Computerworld readers, who rushed to ask Smart Answers about one potential cause. We know that IT skills are in short supply even as lots of IT pros are being laid off. But the chat tends to focus on AI skills: we don't often hear about how hard it is to get data center staff. But it's a real factor, both in the public cloud sector, and maybe especially for those who are repatriating data back to their own data centers. We hear reports of understaffing in areas such as operations, electrical engineering, and cloud architecture.