Staffing Challenges

As IT talent retires and skilled resources grow scarce, CloudFirst helps businesses stay operational by modernizing outdated systems, automating critical tasks, and providing 24/7 expert support. Reduce reliance on hard to find legacy expertise and future proof your infrastructure with scalable, intelligent solutions.

Staffing challenges 2

Supported Platforms:

Key Statistics

Talent shortages and legacy skill gaps are more than HR headaches, they’re preventable business risks. The stats below illustrate how staffing issues are fuelling the shift toward managed services and modern platforms.

70%

Technology leaders report difficulty hiring skilled legacy system specialists.

1 in 5

IT teams say burnout is driven by manual workflows and outdated tools.

67+ Years old

Over 27,000 IBM i specialists are aged 67 years or older!

Client Challenges & Benefits

Shrinking Talent Pool

The Challenge
As legacy system experts retire, it’s increasingly difficult to find skilled professionals to maintain and support aging infrastructure.

The Business Benefit
CloudFirst bridges the talent gap by investing in multi platform training and career development. Our expert teams bring modern skills and certified legacy knowledge, ensuring reliable system management without staffing strain.

Employee Retention

The Challenge
Many IT professionals prefer working with modern technologies to keep their skills relevant. This leads to frustration and higher turnover rates when stuck managing outdated systems.

Employees nearing retirement may advise against major IT change programs to reduce their workload.

The Business Benefit
CloudFirst leverages AI driven tools that simplify cross-platform management, reducing complexity and making legacy environments more accessible, keeping our IT talent engaged and productive.

In addition we provide in depth certified technical training to ensure our team are fully skilled to manage our customer environments.

Knowledge Gaps

The Challenge
Training new employees on outdated, undocumented systems is time consuming and pulls focus from strategic IT initiatives.

This can lead to engaging expensive contract staff with specific legacy experience.

The Business Benefit
CloudFirst automates routine tasks through modern cloud solutions and has certified experts on hand 24/7. This enables your IT teams to focus on innovation, transformation, and high value projects.

High Dependency on External Experts

Challenge
Organizations are forced to rely on a shrinking pool of expensive external resources to address complex legacy system issues.

Often external resources make recommendations that suit their skill set to ensure they are retained.

The Business Benefit
CloudFirst reduces your reliance on external experts by transitioning you to a fully managed cloud platform. Our expert team will provide a consistent level of support 24/7.

CloudFirst will give you clear advice based on your requirements and not technology or vendor biased solutions.

How We Help:

At CloudFirst, we understand the risks organizations face when legacy systems are managed by staff nearing retirement, often creating resistance to modernization and limiting innovation.

We recognize the comfort many businesses find in maintaining legacy infrastructure and the ability to see the lights flashing on the hardware. Many customers come to us worried that they only have technical support coverage for these key systems during core business hours. However, many customers run a 24/7 service and risk impacting the customer experience through out of hours outages. 

We have highly trained staff, who have the latest levels of training and certifications on all systems we support, plus a network of the finest specialist technology experts to call upon when required. Our team specializes in migrating mission critical, highly customized workloads from aging on-prem hardware to a secure, fully managed cloud platform. 

We have an exceptional track record of delivering customer success and welcome the opportunity to explore how we can help your organization.

Business Benefits

Don’t let talent gaps slow innovation. CloudFirst actively develops the next generation of IT experts through ongoing training and certification programs. Our customers gain the confidence to modernize legacy systems by transitioning to our secure, fully managed cloud platform, backed by 24/7 support and future ready expertise.

Streamlined Operations

Shifting to CloudFirst’s multi-tenant cloud platform reduces IT overhead, freeing your team to focus on innovation and high-impact business initiatives instead of routine maintenance.

Cost Savings

CloudFirst’s managed services simplify IT operations, reducing overhead and eliminating the expense of ongoing hardware upgrades, delivering long-term savings and predictable budgeting.

Operational Resilience

Reduce your board level risk exposure to revenue loss from lack of support during non core working hours.

What our 
clients say

“We were looking for a low‑cost, scalable storage option that offered full support for our cloud‑hosting needs. CloudFirst Managed Cloud Hosting proved the perfect solution for our needs, thanks to the bright, knowledgeable people at CloudFirst.”
— Bill Ortiz., JS Stile International 

"In the food and beverage industry, system downtime means production delays and lost revenue. CloudFirst’s Systems Management has been a game changer — from 24/7 monitoring to proactive maintenance, they keep our IBM i environment running smoothly without draining internal resources. It’s expert support we can rely on, day or night."
— Director of IT, National Food & Beverage Manufacturer

"CloudFirst’s Protection Suite didn’t just reduce our risk — it transformed how we manage business continuity. With built-in ransomware defense, real-time recovery, and daily DR testing, we finally have the resilience our IBM systems demand."
— Director of IT Infrastructure, Global Manufacturing Firm

What Clients Say Staffing

Talent shortages shouldn't halt progress. 

The path forward lies in simplicity, automation, and intelligent support. 

Enterprise without limits

Explore how we strengthen resilience where people and technology meet.