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2016: The Year of the Software-Defined Skill Set

  • 2016: The Year of the Software-Defined Skill Set-

    Training Before the Train Wreck

    As virtualization continues to develop at rapid speeds, IT departments and universities will need to structure training programs around skills needed to work in virtualized settings before they find that the organization's skills are obsolete.

    IT departments must be able to pre-empt the possibility of having under-skilled workers by always ensuring that their employees are up to speed with the latest technologies. It is imperative for IT departments to invest in their staff's career development by regularly offering training courses or reimbursing certification courses. In fact, decision-makers consider developing new IT skills and increasing the use of new technologies high priorities for their organization in the next 12 months. (Source: Forrester's Business Technographics Global Priorities and Journey Survey, 2015)

    For the proactive IT worker, free online programming courses and numerous books on cloud infrastructure also serve as resources to catch IT teams up to speed. 

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2016: The Year of the Software-Defined Skill Set

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  • 2016: The Year of the Software-Defined Skill Set-4

    Training Before the Train Wreck

    As virtualization continues to develop at rapid speeds, IT departments and universities will need to structure training programs around skills needed to work in virtualized settings before they find that the organization's skills are obsolete.

    IT departments must be able to pre-empt the possibility of having under-skilled workers by always ensuring that their employees are up to speed with the latest technologies. It is imperative for IT departments to invest in their staff's career development by regularly offering training courses or reimbursing certification courses. In fact, decision-makers consider developing new IT skills and increasing the use of new technologies high priorities for their organization in the next 12 months. (Source: Forrester's Business Technographics Global Priorities and Journey Survey, 2015)

    For the proactive IT worker, free online programming courses and numerous books on cloud infrastructure also serve as resources to catch IT teams up to speed. 

In 2015, Gartner named software-defined applications and infrastructures as one of the year's top strategic trends. As we are seeing more organizations introduce software to effectively utilize and manage physical hardware, the IT teams that manage these software-defined environments will also need to evolve their skill set. Otherwise, they may find that their current capabilities may become obsolete, as many of their primary job functions will become automated.

IT workers will need to broaden their breadth of experience to include more relevant DevOps skills like scripting, automation, and network/storage virtualization, to name a few. Without making this transition, the risk to individual careers is significant. 

As cloud computing and virtualization pave the way for the age of software-defined everything, IT workers must prepare for 2016: the year of the software-defined skill set. In this slideshow, Citrix has identified five ways that IT pros can continue to contribute to their organizations.