IT Skills Crunch By Tom Clancy Industry researcher IDC projects a six-fold increase in worldwide data between 2006 and 2010, largely due to the impact of the Internet (The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010). By 2010, the global tally of data storage is projected at 988 exabytes, up from 161 exabytes in 2006.

This enormous growth is pressuring businesses to determine what must be stored and accessed online, what must be archived but immediately accessible, and what should be discarded—if for no other reason than to survive the daily data onslaught and to stay on top of industry regulatory requirements.

”The exponential growth of data is a major factor that contributing to the IT skills shortage in data management,” said Tom Clancy, VP of Educational Services and Productivity at EMC (www.emc.com), a global data storage and infrastructure solutions provider. “There are also new regulations that require companies to hold onto data longer, and at the same time have immediate access to it,” Clancy continued.

“If you don’t have the in-house knowledge and experience to do this, you have to hire people. The cost of not addressing data management, with the rise of litigation, is too great. In short, the burgeoning amount of data is simply outpacing the ability to manage it.”

Rapidly growing data, data repositories and compliance measures are creating new roles for data storage administrators, such as business continuity administration and the comprehensive definition and organization of a total storage architecture.

The storage infrastructure has to be designed with an eye toward the requirements for data archiving, immediate data access and the ultimate protection of business-critical data. Implicit in this are best practices for day to day data backups, provisioning, archiving, replication, reporting and compliance.

“About 75% oft he companies we work with prefer to hire experienced people for data management,” said EMC’s Clancy. “If they hire new people, they want assurance that these people have the requisite storage knowledge and experience. Possessing a technical certification in the discipline is the most objective way for companies to determine that.”

EMC offers the EMC Proven Professional Certification Program and storage education through many authorized companies.

“Business and IT leadership needs to understand that there is a skills gap in storage management and in the general area of storage,” said Tom Clancy. “Many companies have not yet made the systematic investment in their people to acquire the knowledge and develop the necessary experience, and have strictly focused on the bottom line without thinking of their present and future needs.

It takes a forward understanding of the data management crisis to budget for storage management training when funds are tight--but in the end, an educated person will be much more productive.”

Clancy says that data management and how to best match training and skills development with the associated IT knowledge shortfall frequently “comes to the top” when IT managers assess the needs of the business.

With awareness growing of the shortfall in data management knowledge and experience, organizations are also discovering that it isn’t so easy to hire an expert off the street.

“We believe in certification as another avenue to attain the critical knowledge in data management,” said Clancy. “There are certification programs out there that tie to the “hottest” job openings that companies are advertising and that individuals are interested in.

This includes areas like networking, virtualization, storage and security. Persons entering into these types of certifications should have the confidence that there will be job openings there.”

Clancy has this additional advice for individuals pursuing certification programs, and for the companies that are investing in their training:

• If you are an individual, select a high growth area that you are genuinely interested in and get certified. Once you are certified, you’ve proven that you have know-how in the area and you open yourself up to opportunities to further develop your experience. You can continue to work yourself up the ladder of knowledge through advanced certifications.
  
  
• If you are a business, recognize that you have to make training investments in people to obtain the critical skills you need from your staff. There is always some risk that you can “lose” the person to somebody else, but this is greatly outweighed by the return on investment you get from a highly-performing employee who is more than likely to stay.
  

Clancy and his organization are committed to providing all IT professionals with the skills they need to meet the challenges of storage and information management. To further address the IT skills shortage in storage, they have developed the EMC Academic Alliance program.

Launched in 2006, the program has enrolled over 170 universities and specifically offers technology curriculum that provides students with strong foundations for designing and managing IT infrastructures—helping shape the next generation of IT skills and workers. The program also complements the EMC Proven Professional Certification program.

For more information about the EMC Proven Professional Certification program, please visit http://education.emc.com.

About The Author

Tom Clancy is Vice President of Education Services and Productivity for EMC Corporation. In his career at EMC, Tom has held various field and corporate roles, primarily in partner management of Original Equipment Manufactures, Independent Software Vendors and Channels. Prior to Education Services, Tom managed Global Sales Productivity, focusing on field development, best practices and change execution. Since 2002, his chief responsibility has been to re-align training initiatives to meet the requirements of EMC's business model transformation from a hardware product company to a technology-led provider of systems, software and services. Under Tom's direction, EMC has transitioned from traditional ILT to a much more blended JIT and situational learning approach for specialization and consulting.

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