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FACILITIES skills
The data centre skills crisis: How to avert disaster
The number of data-thirsty businesses that depend on reliable and high-speed connectivity has increased significantly over the last few years. As data volumes continue to grow, there is increasing pressure on the data centre to keep up with demand while reflecting the changes in the technological landscape such as virtualisation, cloud computing and increased workforce mobility. By Srinivasa Rao Velamala, Global Head – Infrastructure Engineering Services (IES), Wipro.
The modern data centre – a highly automated, dense and virtualised IT infrastructure – demands that IT professionals understand multiple disciplines as well as the facilities infrastructure. In addition, to adopt these new features and trends the data centre architecture has to be dynamic and supporting mission-critical applications, which require specific skills to deliver performance, availability and security.
Unfortunately, at the same time as pressure on the data centre has increased, there has also been a decline in the pool of professionals qualified to run and maintain these facilities. A shortage in the right skillsets, a deficit of relevant training programmes and the increasing complexity of the data centre environment has led to an impending data centre talent crisis.
Reasons for the skills gap There are several reasons for the data centre skills gap, which can be summarised as follows:
Lack of a structured career track at an architect level: a well-defined career track to acquire the skills required for data centre operations and management is frequently missing in many organisations. Currently, the journey to become a DC architect is different for different people with few attempts of standardisation. However, a more defined model, such as creating Centres of Excellence, or investing in infrastructure to enable hands-on experience would ensure that a DC architect has exposure to the required skill ingredients in the right
proportion. Too few foundation programmes cover the data centre as a topic: organisations such as large service providers frequently run a factory conveyor belt model to build skills. Unfortunately, these programmes operate mostly at an individual level. If these programmes were integrated at the data centre level, however, it would help create a larger work force with base-level knowledge of various aspects of the data centre to build upon.
Lack of academic focus: major programming languages, models related to synchronous data link control (SDLC), IT quality frameworks and the like are all covered as part of IT degrees.
While these courses help create skills in the fashionable Application Development & Management area, there are hardly any specific topics covered at an academic level for specialised subjects such as the data centre. This lack of support at the grassroots level affects career choices and opportunities for IT graduates at the very start of their working lives.
Few employability options post- college: due to an absence of data centre education in degree programmes,
Winter 2013 I
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