- The journey of IT over the years has been surprising
in so many ways.
Back in 1990, it would have been difficult
to imagine today's world of smartphones,
blockchain technology, artificial intelligence,
and cloud computing.
Many technologists who have spent a few decades in IT
have had a difficult time adjusting to the new realities
of contemporary technology.
I can respect that.
Many of us were used to the complexity and candidly,
the fun of procuring complex and expensive hardware
and software, mounting it in a data center, configuring it,
and then maintaining and supporting it.
This work requires valued and deep technical skills,
but over the past 15 years,
many aspects of enterprise technology have been reduced
to a series of services that conceal complexity
and simply provide a solution on demand
via an internet browser.
This characteristic of everything as a service
or X as a service requires different skills.
Plenty of legacy technology work is still required.
It's not going to go anywhere too fast.
Enterprises have a huge volume of traditional systems
that still need attention.
Areas such as software engineering, business analysis,
project management, data science, vendor management,
and security will not only remain relevant,
but will even grow in demand.
It's prudent to recognize the broader trends
and begin considering the skill needs for a future
where X as a service and related technologies will dominate.
The recommendations I put forward here
for acquiring new skills can certainly be acquired
by existing staff.
Retooling is an option when the individual staff member
is open and ready to embrace change.
First and foremost, organizations require
the right leadership to help develop
and manage a vision for X as a service in their environment.
This is a world where major downsizing and even elimination
of the traditional on-premises data center is conceivable.
A larger emphasis will be put on vendor relationship
management, as X as a service creates
much greater dependency on providers.
Another leadership quality will be the ability to identify
and deliver more innovation.
This means not only the tools and skills to understand
and evaluate trends, but the capacity to manage bolder
and riskier investment bests.
In X as a service, managers are required to understand the
different IT finance approach
between the traditional CapEx model of IT procurement
and expenses and the Opex model of subscription
on-demand based services.
They will also need to pay attention
and manage subscription compliance from ensuring
the right access levels for staff to the movements
of licenses between employees as people leave
or change roles.
This will also include the need to understand what solutions
employees are using.
In an X as a service world managing what people use
and how enterprise data is stored and shared
is vastly more complex.
X as a service requires a mix of old and new skills.
Technologists still needs to understand the fundamentals
of systems, network architecture, data
and database management, service management,
system administration, and various levels
of software coding.
New hard skills will include talents
in cloud system integration, cybersecurity in the cloud,
and an area called low coding.
Low coding is a software development approach
that focuses on higher level languages,
including function creation through graphical interfaces
rather than lines of code.
The road to embracing the value of everything as a service
requires acknowledgement and action regarding
the right talent to achieve business goals.