Takeaway of the week is that we may be presented with more evidence that cloud computing and mobile technology are must-have skills and expertise for the IT job-seeker - with explosive potential for 2012, but it could be just as important to expand that technical skill set to include real-world business skills.
Forrester: Cloud Computing Makes More Inroads in 2012
By next year, more businesses will have knowledge and interest in the notion of cloud computing, which is both good and bad for the IT world - and those seeking employment in it, Forrester Research predicts.
Analyst James Staten of Forrester, the global technology and market research firm, said in a recent article on GigaOM, that 2012 will bring serious growth and accompanying pitfalls for the exploding IT sector.
Good news: As giants including IBM and others step into the fray, fraudulent cloud ‘experts’ will be exposed as more cloud deployments demand true training and experience. Currently, there are more openings for cloud experts than cloud experts available to fill them, officials report. IT channel players that sell the software, hardware and services to business customers and haven’t yet embraced the cloud craze have their backs against the wall, Staten noted. “For the channel to survive it must add value around cloud services and there’s plenty of opportunity to go around,” he said.
Biz Skills Boon for Techies
The IT industry is gaining more of a foothold in the consumer market which is pushing industry professionals beyond their traditional comfort zone in terms of skill sets.
According to a new BYTE story, the consumerization of IT is requiring the experts in their fields to add business skills and other real-world abilities to their ‘toolbelts’ or be marginalized. More technology users today have a higher comfort level with gadgets and can solve many of their own problems, leaving IT to the land of the overly complicated problems, the article notes. What this means is that may IT jobs are disappearing while others are simultaneously being created in areas previously unimagined.
The IT industry, experts say, will need to be more about involving itself in the business end of various technologies. Technicians can’t remain ignorant of the businesses they are being relied on to support.
“We hire a lot of engineers and those engineers might be mechanical, electrical, or general engineering with a business-minded engineering discipline, said Jim Newman, executive vice president of recruiting for marketing firm Acquity Group, which expects a broad set of skills for prospective technical employees.
Think of it this way: Marketing departments will hire marketers with technical skills or technicians with marketing skills, but no longer just techs. The technicians of today must compete with the business-savvy technicians of tomorrow.
Billionth Sign that Cloud is Where It’s At
The cloud equipment market is likely to exceed $33 billion this year thanks to rapid adoptions, according to new research.
Accelerated IaaS, PaaS and SaaS deployments account for the boon estimated by the latest quarterly report from Synergy Research, reported in IT Pro.
The report noted that equipment for the market, which includes networking, computing, and storage platforms for both private and public clouds, exceeded $17 billion in sales in the first half of 2011.
Just the latest signs for IT professionals and prospective technicians that cloud computing in some form or fashion is a must-have skill and understanding for priority value in the industry going forward.
According to report findings, the U.S. leads in cloud equipment sales, with nearly 40 percent of the market in the first half of 2011, with Europe, the Middle East and Africa the fastest growing region.
Three Ways to Attract Tech Talent
Grow it, train it or poach it. These are the three ways one technical industry executive theorizes a startup outside the hotbead of Silicon Valley can attract a talented workforce.
Douglas Merrill, CEO of financial services startup, ZestCash, said a firm’s success in using any one of those methods to find great worker depends on the burgeoning company’s culture, in a recent article in VentureBeat.
To grow your own talent means you need to hire folks straight out of college, Merrill says, noting you will get high energy along with a craving for basic work skills you can instill. Alternately, you can nab technical talent by pulling folks from the big firms of Silicon Valley with the attractions of a less-political and hierarchal monolith that might be located in a less claustrophobic environment.
Merrill said for great engineers to be uprooted from established companies, “you have to double down on culture.
“Engineers have to feel the future of the company depends on them,” he said. “If they have a bad day, something bad will happen - a feature won’t launch, a sale won’t happen - and, in contrast, when they do well, the company is materially better off.” Companies that build a culture that engineers want to be a part of, according to Merrill, will allow them to “grow, retrain, or poach the best engineers out there.”
