Negotiation and contractual skills most important when managing outsourced data centres and cloud services

Computing's research finds that enterprises want proactive staff who can seek redress if contractual obligations are not being delivered

Being able to manage service partners and oversee contracts and their delivery are collectively seen as the top skillset for enterprises when managing outsourced data centres and cloud data centre services.

Computing's latest data centre research, which will be revealed in full at the Data Centre Summit 2015 next week, asked respondents what are the most important skillsets or attributes for managing outsourced data centres or cloud services. Negotiation and contractual skills came out on top, representing a big shift from traditional facilities where "understanding the technology" was the first choice.

Enterprises need proactive staff who can seek redress if contractual obligations are not being delivered.

"The focus is heavily on supplier relationship and monitoring to make sure that it's doing exactly what it should be doing in an efficient way," a head of IT in the financial sector said.

"You need the skills to be able to move workloads tactically to make sure that commercially there aren't lock-ins that you can't escape from when your planned usage differs from your contracted usage," added an infrastructure strategy architect from a large retail firm.

This is a combination of skills and managerial ability that is not required to such a degree in traditional on-premise data centres.

The second most important skillset for outsourcing and cloud, according to respondents, is a strong security focus.

"Because you lose a certain amount of control, you might argue that your security should be a bit tighter," said an enterprise architect who works in the entertainment industry.

Other skillsets that ranked highly were "understanding of the business" and "understanding of regulatory environment".

Computing's Data Centre Summit will be held on Wednesday 23 September at the Hilton Tower Bridge in London. The event is free to attend for end users, for more information click here.

Computing and QA have partnered to launch their cloud computing training campaign, which aims to raise awareness of cloud computing and explore how companies can gain the maximum business benefits.