The IT skills gap continues to plague organizations looking for highly-skilled workers. Simply put, there are far more openings for highly skilled IT jobs than qualified workers to fill them.

Research firm Gartner reports that “by 2020, 75 percent of organizations will experience visible business disruptions due to

[infrastructure and operations]

skills gaps, which is an increase from less than 20 percent in 2016.”

The technology industry is fighting to close the skills gap through training, recruiting, and employee retention programs. But the technology skills gap is even more pronounced in certain areas, such as Artificial Intelligence, and around certain platforms, such as Salesforce.com. The Salesforce ecosystem, in particular is innovating faster than talent can keep pace. Research firm IDC has predicted that the so-called Salesforce economy will create 3.2 million jobs by 2022. But while this is great news for Salesforce and the economy, it’s causing a significant imbalance between supply and demand that could hurt the ecosystem if not addressed.

More recent research shows that the number of Salesforce developer job openings outpace available talent by 4:1. For Technical Architects, the highest paid and most in demand role, that ratio jumps to an astounding 10:1. In established markets self-proclaimed Technical Architects make up only 1.7 percent of the Salesforce-related profiles on LinkedIn, and in emerging markets that are key to Salesforce’s growth, they make up only 0.8 percent of the relevant profiles.

While the explosive growth for Salesforce skills in the market is good for those who have them, it spells some challenges.

Many organizations in both established and emerging markets are scrambling to find or develop the talent necessary to get the most out of their Salesforce investment, or if you are a Salesforce partner, to develop on the platform or serve those customers.

As businesses expand their usage of the Salesforce platform to manage and automate an increasing number of business processes, the need for advanced technical roles like Developer and Technical Architect will become even more important for realizing successful outcomes. As Salesforce continues to add to the depth of its existing features and expand into completely new areas like AI, customers and partners will need an even broader array of skills.