In this piece, Stefano shares expert advice on the Microsoft tech skills that will be most sought-after in the near future, and offers his tips on how to develop them.
What advice would you give to professionals looking to future-proof themselves in light of the ongoing digital skills gap?
We’re in an era where demand for digital skills is growing but, unfortunately, supply is lower than it needs to be. Workforce shortages persist across the tech industry with employers struggling to find skilled talent that’s properly prepared for digital roles. And this gap continues to widen every year.
My advice to young talents is to be passionate, and not rely solely on things you learned at school. In the IT world, that knowledge is absolutely important, but many technologies and application scenarios can only be experienced and mastered with practice in the field.
Schools today offer excellent opportunities to do internships, so young people are able to take these opportunities without having to think about immediate earnings. Take advantage of these. Have passion, inform yourself, study new technologies and, if possible, experiment with them.
All of this will be useful to you, and will allow you to make a difference.
How do you think the increasing use and accessibility of AI will affect roles like yours in the near future?
I’m honestly not worried about AI taking IT jobs; I think it will be the opposite. AI accelerates automation, boosts productivity around certain tasks, and helps reduce human error. But today’s AI is unpredictable. It needs training to be efficient, and from an IT perspective, that need is increasing demand for IT specialists, not cutting it.
People think commercial AI is like ChatGPT, but it’s not. In business it’s far more than that; it has to work with business data and make decisions accordingly. This can’t be done with AI models alone—it needs IT professionals.
The cloud is a fundamental building block in this change, and for that reason, experts on cloud technologies and AI will enjoy a great future for a long time.
What skills do you think are going to be most in demand in the next few years?
AI will definitely be one of the most in-demand skills in the next few years, but there are other areas where talent is scarce. One of these is cloud technologies.
There’s a real need to have more experts on serverless technologies, database tuning and optimization, and data analysis. There’s also a huge need for security experts.
Security is a hot topic nowadays, especially in the enterprise world. The cloud requires high levels of security and I see so many companies every day that don’t have a security culture in place. We need more experts to change that.
In terms of Microsoft specifically, low-code technologies are growing fast and there’s a lot of potential there for IT professionals.
What steps can professionals take to continuously upskill and expand their Microsoft-related knowledge to stay relevant and competitive?
Microsoft provides a lot of content about its technologies in various formats including video, books, documentation, free training, and virtual events.
I suggest you focus on a topic that’s both in demand in the market and of interest to you: after all, passion is everything, so embrace something that you love.
Here are my personal suggestions for improving your Microsoft skills:
- Microsoft Learn This platform offers documentations and training content on every Microsoft product, and should be the starting point to expand your knowledge. You can access interactive lessons, professional development hours, and virtual events, earn certifications, find programs that help meet your goals, and connect with the Microsoft student developer community.
- Microsoft Docs Microsoft Docsis the official library of technical documentation for everyone who works with Microsoft products, and contains everything you need to deep dive into a topic. Starting with Microsoft Learn and progressing onto Microsoft Docs is the best path for upskilling.
- Blogs Microsoft’s official blogs talk about many of its technologies, and also host regular articles from Microsoft MVPs that discuss the technologies in depth. Follow those blogs; they will absolutely help you with upskilling.
- Certifications They are ideal for testing and proving your expertise in a technology, and will validate your skills when applying for a role. Microsoft has a large stable of certifications across every product, and at different levels. Take a few, they’ll certainly help!
Are there any particular developments on the horizon for Dynamics 365 that you’re particularly excited about?
The Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform is improving every year and I think it’s now the best business platform in the world for small, medium and enterprise customers, especially if you consider the ecosystem of applications and the Azure platform that surrounds it.
As you can imagine, there are lots of improvements planned for the next few years. I’m personally particularly excited about the introduction of Co-pilots for Business in Dynamics 365, which is a set of AI-powered features that will be embedded into every product to increase productivity.
In terms of Dynamics 365 ERP solutions, which I work with the most, I love that there are always more integrations planned with cloud services offered by Azure. I’m especially looking forward to the future integration with Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft’s new unified platform for data analytics. And on the development side, Microsoft’s development platform is absolutely top class and with new improvements to the codebase and developer tools for Dynamics 365, the future will be bright.
About Stefano
Stefano Demiliani is a Microsoft MVP for Business Applications and Azure, a Microsoft Certified Trainer, an Azure Certified Solution Architect, and a DevOps Engineer. Currently CTO for Italian Microsoft Partner Nav-lab Group, Stefano is frequently involved in helping customers migrate to Azure. He’s also an author, speaker, and has been named a Community Champion for Azure and a Dynamics Community Star by Microsoft.
