Make digital and AI upskilling your competitive advantage

By: Steve Hall, Head of Global Partner Programs and Partner Enablement – AWS

As many businesses are discovering firsthand, your AI investments are only as informed and effective as the people who train and deploy them. Meanwhile, employee upskilling is a key driver to supporting business productivity, innovation, and competitiveness, but also to boost employee engagement, morale, and retention. Prioritizing complementary investments in both AI and human workers is important for continued success. If you’re a business decision-maker wanting to make AI adoption a reality for your organization, this post can help you:

• Understand market trends about fostering talent for the long term
• Explore how other businesses benefit from employee upskilling using Amazon Web Services (AWS) training programs
• Find helpful resources to kickstart your own digital upskilling program with AWS

Market trends underscore the value of digital upskilling

In a 2024 McKinsey survey, We’re all techies now: Digital skill building for the future, featuring leaders of tech-focused organizations, 80% of respondents said upskilling is the most effective way to reduce employee skills gaps. Yet only 28% of respondents’ organizations were planning to invest in upskilling over the next 2–3 years. “Companies that are slow to launch skill-building efforts risk missing out on important benefits for their people and for the organization itself,” noted McKinsey.

Similarly, Accelerating AI Skills, a study by Access Partnership and AWS surveying 2,000 organizations in western Europe, found enormous potential benefits from AI upskilling. According to the study, “AI skills could boost productivity by at least 39% and increase salaries by up to 30%. But to fully harness this potential, organizations will need to address the pressing gap in AI-specific skills in the workforce.”

The search for top human talent is especially noticeable when it comes to agentic AI skills. For instance, McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2025 found that job postings seeking expertise in agentic AI increased 985% in 2025 compared to 2023–2024. Other factors such as rapid innovation, surging retirements, and broadening digital access further impress the need to find or cultivate people for an evolving talent pool.

The notion that digital upskilling is only for tech teams is outdated, especially as cloud skills and other evolving technologies permeate various departments, teams, and roles. Research by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) shows that AWS Partner organizations with higher AWS training adoption achieved a 42% higher average gross margin for that practice.

Terrascope reduces deployment time by 97% and customer cloud spending by 30%

Terrascope

Terrascope is a decarbonization software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that uses machine learning (ML) and AI to help enterprises achieve net-zero emissions. Launched in Singapore in 2021, Terrascope has worked with global customers such as Tetra Pak, Mitsubishi Shokuhin, and iNova Pharmaceuticals.

Terrascope is a decarbonization software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that uses machine learning (ML) and AI to help enterprises achieve net-zero emissions. Launched in Singapore in 2021, Terrascope has worked with global customers such as Tetra Pak, Mitsubishi Shokuhin, and iNova Pharmaceuticals.

Amid rapid growth, the company needed to find technology partners that could support greater cloud platform scalability, security, reliability, and customer experience. Terrascope migrated to AWS and quickly joined the AWS Partner Network, recognizing AWS’s commitment to security, compliance, and sustainability.

As part of its agreement with AWS, Terrascope used AWS Professional Services to assist with migration and upskilling over half of its employees. Engineers, product managers, and sales teams gained access to instructor-led deep dive courses aligned to their roles and objectives. Team members also participated in AWS Solutions-Focused Immersion Days to accelerate learning and gain skills to operate infrastructure and applications in the cloud. Soon after, Terrascope enrolled its teams in AWS Skill Builder, an online learning platform that empowers employees to learn at their own pace.

“We aim to make learning an ongoing experience. AWS Skill Builder has been incredibly useful for our teams to be able to invest in that continuous learning journey.”

– Maya Hari, CEO at Terrascope

Since migrating to AWS, Terrascope has actively enhanced its customers’ experience, boosted internal productivity, and strengthened its capacity to drive sustainability through technology. Customers can now use Terrascope’s hybrid SaaS model on their own clouds, and the software is readily accessible in AWS Marketplace. Meanwhile, the benefits of engaging AWS Professional Services and AWS Skill Builder continue to pay dividends.

Thanks to AWS resources that democratize AI and cloud learning, Terrascope is also growing its business more efficiently, promoting rapid innovation internally and for customers. Where onboarding new customers once took 3–4 days, it now takes only 3–4 hours. And with a 97% faster deployment rate of customer data planes, Terrascope’s customers can quickly reach their sustainability goals.

“AWS has been a strong partner across various fronts. Together, we’ve architected our platform to be scalable and enterprise-grade, and we continue to explore the application of new technologies that facilitate our growth.”

– Maya Hari, CEO at Terrascope

Kyndryl improves recruiting, onboarding, and upskilling outcomes

Kyndryl

Kyndryl designs, builds, manages, and modernizes mission-critical technology systems. From cloud migration and managed services to automated solutions to prevent money laundering or protect firefighters on duty, Kyndryl supports multiple industries. But becoming one of the largest global IT services providers doesn’t happen without thoughtful investments and dedication to upskilling your teams.

“We are joining forces with AWS to help our clients through their cloud transformational journey. Our people, their skills, are our primary asset and differentiator. Keeping that training and certification current is critical to our business.”

– Mike Williams, Vice President of AWS Alliance at Kyndryl

Recognizing that not everyone learns the same way, Kyndryl worked with AWS Partner Enablement Managers to develop curated, multimodal learning across its teams. Kyndryl employees can now grow skills in their preferred way through a combination of self-paced learning and instructor-led training, both in classroom and virtual.

One example is AWS Cloud Quest, the only 3D role-playing game to help people build practical AWS Cloud skills. Similarly, AWS Jam offers immersive gamified training that helps learners apply their AWS Cloud skills to solve real-world, open-ended problems using AWS services. But these are only some of the many upskilling resources available through AWS.

“We see use of [AWS] Skill Builder to not only [help our employees] prepare for certifications but to practice their skills. We see growth in our public cloud signings, which we think simply could not have been accomplished without the effort and focus on our skills.”

– Mike Williams, Vice President of AWS Alliance at Kyndryl

To keep pace with demand for its cloud services, Kyndryl further engaged AWS to implement a cloud literacy training curriculum across 23 colleges in India. This curriculum included digital training courses and hands-on labs through AWS Educate. The result: 480 new cloud administrators and Terraform developers hired as a direct result of the program.

“Typically, it would take between four and six weeks for new hires to be ready to help. Now, new hires are ready within the first week. They know AWS basics, so we don’t have to start from scratch, and they can begin working on customer projects right away.”

– Raj Mohan, Director of Delivery Management at Kyndryl

Conclusion

In today’s business landscape, upskilling is no longer optional. It’s essential.

By investing in the growth and development of your teams, not only can you enhance performance and innovation but also build a future-ready workforce. Putting this in motion doesn’t have to be daunting or limited to technical roles, either. Now is the time to prepare your full organization for intuitive, entertaining, and transformative digital learning for long-term success.

Interested in a customer learning program for your organization? Check out AWS Partner Learning Plans to explore options, hear more customer stories, and engage an AWS training expert.