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The cloud and IT skills gap has been a long-suffering gripe for many organisations; and a new research study from Robert Half Technology shows the problem is by no means resolved yet.

According to the study, which was based on interviews with more than 100 CIOs and IT executives across the UK, three quarters (74%) of CIOs and IT directors polled admitted they frequently encountered IT professionals who were not up to the task. Yet only two in five (38%) say they use standardised skills testing before making job offers.

Anyone reading this who has ever spent the occasional lunchtime browsing LinkedIn will have undoubtedly seen memes around how qualifications are not a barrier to success in the workplace. With that in mind, the number of CIOs and IT directors who see certifications as a measurement of skill is at 61%. A similar number (60%) focus on years on experience, while more than half (53%) ask for examples of previous work in their job testing.

Evidently, the gap is clear to see. “The rate of technological change combined with the digital evolution of business today is exacerbating the current IT skills shortage in the UK,” said Neil Owen, director of Robert Half Technology. “The pace of hiring to support business growth, digital transformation and IT security challenges, while using the latest software and systems to meet best practice standards is seeing IT professionals continually needing to upskill.

“To cope, many businesses are needing to reassess their hiring requirements, considering the ‘need to have’ and ‘nice to have’ skill sets alongside cultural fit,” added Owen. “Finding high-potential candidates who can be trained and mentored to company specifications will be a key strategy for surviving – and thriving – in the technology war for talent.”

Writing for this publication earlier this month, Antonella Corno argued the need for certifiable cloud skills. “With cloud skills and the certifications, IT professionals can demonstrate that they can help an IT department drive cloud deployments in a consistent and centralised manner,” she wrote. “They become more valuable to any organisations because they know how to help to bring about desired business outcomes, such as greater business agility and lower IT architecture spending.”

(c)iStock.com/baona

As the sun rises on 2017, a highlight of this New Year will be the gathering strength of the cloud. If the big question posed by businesses and their CIOs in 2016 was whether they should migrate to the cloud; in 2017 the question will be what is the best way to get there.

A recent IBM survey of more than 1,000 C-suite executives from 18 industries found that almost every company we surveyed is using cloud, but only in pockets of their business. 78% of respondents say their cloud initiatives are coordinated or fully integrated, compared to just 34% in 2012. At the same time, nearly half of workloads – or 45% – are expected to remain on-premises with dedicated servers.

As businesses continue to benefit from integrating their on-premises infrastructure with the cloud, they are also increasing their investments in new workloads on public clouds. Clearly, the cloud – and especially hybrid cloud – is becoming a platform for innovation. With that backdrop, here are five emerging or accelerating trends that we see happening for cloud in 2017:

The rise of cognitive computing will be driven by the cloud

An increasing number of the things we depend on in our daily and work lives resides in the growing ocean of data that surrounds us. An indisputable truism of the digital age is that data is growing faster than our ability to make sense of it.

In fact, 80% of the world’s data is essentially “dark” – collected and stored by computers – but invisible and unusable by humans. Cognitive systems, delivered via the cloud are lifting the veil on this so-called “dark data.”

Servers, storage and software are now being built for a hybrid cloud world that is rapidly moving towards cognitive solutions made possible by computer systems that can understand, learn and reason. In 2017, cognitive solutions delivered via the cloud will continue to drive new experiences and transform whole industries — from financial services and retail to healthcare and airlines.

Blockchain is bringing truth and trust to the digital age via the cloud

One of the most exciting technological breakthroughs in recent years is the advent of blockchain, the first peer-to-peer, global platform for business and personal transactions.

Blockchain is a trusted distributed ledger secured by advanced cryptography, making it the most secure and fail-safe system ever developed for the digital age. Only a closed circle of participants have access, and each party can only view the information they are authorised to see within a transaction.

More and more companies and organizations are choosing blockchain on the cloud. This trend will continue in 2017. In fact, it is estimated that applying blockchain to global supply chains could generate more than $100 billion in annual efficiencies. The best systems are built to scale, broadly accessible and consumable as APIs or solutions on the cloud.

Serverless cloud computing is eliminating complexity and cost for app development

Serverless computing is now making the physical and virtual servers developers use to run apps completely invisible.

This technology, delivered on the cloud, is beginning to unleash game-changing competitive advantages for organisations, large and small. In 2017 more businesses will take advantage of its many benefits, including reduced development time and lower cost.

Cloud will become an enabler of security

In 2016 we frequently saw news of a major IT security breach that adversely affected businesses, governments or citizens. And even as more of us are moving to the cloud, security concerns still loom as a big inhibitor to adoption. While the threat is real, major cloud providers are taking extraordinary steps to build in security protections.

In 2017, new cognitive capabilities will accelerate the transformation of the cloud’s perceived security vulnerabilities into a strength. Built upon security intelligence, cognitive solutions generate not just answers, but hypotheses, evidence-based reasoning and recommendations for improved decision making. As a result, cognitive security will help address current skills gap, accelerate responses and help reduce the cost and complexity of dealing with cybercrime.

Culture transformation is driving the journey to the cloud

As more and more organisations adopt the cloud, the journey will require a transformation of more than just the technology. Developers, startups and organisations must embrace a culture change that prioritizes the user experience, and values collaboration, the freedom to experiment and a laser sharp business focus.

In 2017, we will see more IT companies creating actual physical spaces – innovation centres or garages – where talent is attracted and nurtured and small teams can gather to learn new skills and collaborate on breakthrough innovations.

As the New Year begins, cloud platforms will accelerate innovation and the key role of information technology in the transformation of business and society. 

(c)iStock.com/baona

As the sun rises on 2017, a highlight of this New Year will be the gathering strength of the cloud. If the big question posed by businesses and their CIOs in 2016 was whether they should migrate to the cloud; in 2017 the question will be what is the best way to get there.

A recent IBM survey of more than 1,000 C-suite executives from 18 industries found that almost every company we surveyed is using cloud, but only in pockets of their business. 78% of respondents say their cloud initiatives are coordinated or fully integrated, compared to just 34% in 2012. At the same time, nearly half of workloads – or 45% – are expected to remain on-premises with dedicated servers.

As businesses continue to benefit from integrating their on-premises infrastructure with the cloud, they are also increasing their investments in new workloads on public clouds. Clearly, the cloud – and especially hybrid cloud – is becoming a platform for innovation. With that backdrop, here are five emerging or accelerating trends that we see happening for cloud in 2017:

The rise of cognitive computing will be driven by the cloud

An increasing number of the things we depend on in our daily and work lives resides in the growing ocean of data that surrounds us. An indisputable truism of the digital age is that data is growing faster than our ability to make sense of it.

In fact, 80% of the world’s data is essentially “dark” – collected and stored by computers – but invisible and unusable by humans. Cognitive systems, delivered via the cloud are lifting the veil on this so-called “dark data.”

Servers, storage and software are now being built for a hybrid cloud world that is rapidly moving towards cognitive solutions made possible by computer systems that can understand, learn and reason. In 2017, cognitive solutions delivered via the cloud will continue to drive new experiences and transform whole industries — from financial services and retail to healthcare and airlines.

Blockchain is bringing truth and trust to the digital age via the cloud

One of the most exciting technological breakthroughs in recent years is the advent of blockchain, the first peer-to-peer, global platform for business and personal transactions.

Blockchain is a trusted distributed ledger secured by advanced cryptography, making it the most secure and fail-safe system ever developed for the digital age. Only a closed circle of participants have access, and each party can only view the information they are authorised to see within a transaction.

More and more companies and organizations are choosing blockchain on the cloud. This trend will continue in 2017. In fact, it is estimated that applying blockchain to global supply chains could generate more than $100 billion in annual efficiencies. The best systems are built to scale, broadly accessible and consumable as APIs or solutions on the cloud.

Serverless cloud computing is eliminating complexity and cost for app development

Serverless computing is now making the physical and virtual servers developers use to run apps completely invisible.

This technology, delivered on the cloud, is beginning to unleash game-changing competitive advantages for organisations, large and small. In 2017 more businesses will take advantage of its many benefits, including reduced development time and lower cost.

Cloud will become an enabler of security

In 2016 we frequently saw news of a major IT security breach that adversely affected businesses, governments or citizens. And even as more of us are moving to the cloud, security concerns still loom as a big inhibitor to adoption. While the threat is real, major cloud providers are taking extraordinary steps to build in security protections.

In 2017, new cognitive capabilities will accelerate the transformation of the cloud’s perceived security vulnerabilities into a strength. Built upon security intelligence, cognitive solutions generate not just answers, but hypotheses, evidence-based reasoning and recommendations for improved decision making. As a result, cognitive security will help address current skills gap, accelerate responses and help reduce the cost and complexity of dealing with cybercrime.

Culture transformation is driving the journey to the cloud

As more and more organisations adopt the cloud, the journey will require a transformation of more than just the technology. Developers, startups and organisations must embrace a culture change that prioritizes the user experience, and values collaboration, the freedom to experiment and a laser sharp business focus.

In 2017, we will see more IT companies creating actual physical spaces – innovation centres or garages – where talent is attracted and nurtured and small teams can gather to learn new skills and collaborate on breakthrough innovations.

As the New Year begins, cloud platforms will accelerate innovation and the key role of information technology in the transformation of business and society. 

Cloud usage continues to gain momentum across all industries. In a recent FutureScape: Worldwide Cloud 2017 Predictions report, IDC predicted that between 60 percent and 70 percent of all software, services and technology spending will be on the cloud by 2020.
With this increase in cloud usage comes a corresponding need for employees with cloud skills. Supply has not kept pace with demand, however. The State of Cloud Readiness Study 2016 found that 53 percent of IT leaders are struggling to acquire the necessary skills to support cloud initiatives within their organizations, while almost half indicate staff training is not a priority.

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The majority of managed service providers (MSPs) believe their hottest competition is coming from cloud providers as opposed to fellow MSPs, with Google the vendor to fear most, according to a new piece of research from Sonian.

The study, released today and titled ‘A New World Order: How MSPs are Trying to Survive and Thrive in a Cloud-First World’, featured responses from more than 300 managed service vendors, and found in general a rather nervous landscape.

More than half (55%) of respondents say they aim to revitalise their portfolio by beefing up in-demand services such as storage, hosting, and data analytics, while more than two thirds (67%) plan to launch new or expanded security products to reclaim market share.

When it came to finding out which cloud provider represented the biggest threat, the reply of Google may not have been highest on most lists. Yet given the choice between Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Hewlett Packard, IBM and Microsoft, survey respondents said they most often lose deals to Google. What’s more, MSPs expect Google to become the cloud market leader by 2021 – a prediction which somewhat flies in the face of current research findings, which puts AWS way in front.

“The new survey findings confirm what we already have seen play out in the industry: that cloud vendors are having a real impact on MSPs’ bottom lines by interfacing directly with end users,” said Jeff Lippincott, Sonian VP business development. “To not only cope with this threat but thrive in the market, MSPs must take advantage of the opportunity to invest in new services such as secure data storage, business intelligence applications and hosted email applications.”

Naturally, it makes sense for Sonian to push through this research; the company works with and partners extensively with MSPs for their range of products. Yet MSPs can take some easy steps. Writing for this publication in October, Pete Fuduric discussed how managed service vendors can ‘humanise’ their marketing efforts, including avoiding buzzwords, include real stories in marketing, and build email lists organically through content and other inbound campaigns.

(c)iStock.com/KatarzynaBialasiewicz

The majority of managed service providers (MSPs) believe their hottest competition is coming from cloud providers as opposed to fellow MSPs, with Google the vendor to fear most, according to a new piece of research from Sonian.

The study, released today and titled ‘A New World Order: How MSPs are Trying to Survive and Thrive in a Cloud-First World’, featured responses from more than 300 managed service vendors, and found in general a rather nervous landscape.

More than half (55%) of respondents say they aim to revitalise their portfolio by beefing up in-demand services such as storage, hosting, and data analytics, while more than two thirds (67%) plan to launch new or expanded security products to reclaim market share.

When it came to finding out which cloud provider represented the biggest threat, the reply of Google may not have been highest on most lists. Yet given the choice between Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Hewlett Packard, IBM and Microsoft, survey respondents said they most often lose deals to Google. What’s more, MSPs expect Google to become the cloud market leader by 2021 – a prediction which somewhat flies in the face of current research findings, which puts AWS way in front.

“The new survey findings confirm what we already have seen play out in the industry: that cloud vendors are having a real impact on MSPs’ bottom lines by interfacing directly with end users,” said Jeff Lippincott, Sonian VP business development. “To not only cope with this threat but thrive in the market, MSPs must take advantage of the opportunity to invest in new services such as secure data storage, business intelligence applications and hosted email applications.”

Naturally, it makes sense for Sonian to push through this research; the company works with and partners extensively with MSPs for their range of products. Yet MSPs can take some easy steps. Writing for this publication in October, Pete Fuduric discussed how managed service vendors can ‘humanise’ their marketing efforts, including avoiding buzzwords, include real stories in marketing, and build email lists organically through content and other inbound campaigns.

SYS-CON Events announced today that SD Times | BZ Media has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 6–8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. BZ Media LLC is a high-tech media company that produces technical conferences and expositions, and publishes a magazine, newsletters and websites in the software development, SharePoint, mobile development and commercial UAV markets.

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• 93% of global product leaders say that predictive maintenance combined with real-time equipment monitoring enabled by integration is a must-have for factory planning today.
• 75% of global product leaders plan to implement factory of the future initiatives and programs in the next five years or less, starting with Industry 4.0
• 67% of automotive executives expect that new technologies enabled by real-time integration will enable their teams to reach and exceed lean management and continuous improvement goals starting this year and accelerating through 2030.

Boston Consulting Group’s recent article, The Factory of the Future provides insights into a recent global survey the consulting firm conducted of more than 750 manufacturing product leaders from leading companies in three industrial sectors: automotive (which includes suppliers and original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs), engineered products, and process industries.

The survey’s objective is to define the vision for the factory of the future in 2030.  Determining long-term benefits and the roadmap to implementation are also goals of the study Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and its research partner, the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, achieved. The Factory of the Future is a vision for how manufacturers should enhance production by making improvements in three dimensions: plant structure, plant digitisation, and plant processes.

Five ways integration fuels the factory of the future’s growth

Real-time integration based on intelligent objects that connect diverse enterprise systems including SAP, Salesforce and others is the foundation that manufacturing companies must adopt to excel in their Factory of the Future efforts. These real-time objects illustrate the future of Application Programmer Interfaces (API).  APIs that will fuel and drive the Factory of the Future will enrich each real-time integration points across manufacturing networks. Intelligent Objects pervasively used today are the precursors to the most valuable APIs that will enable Factories of the Future tomorrow. With APIs continually improving and gaining the capability to provide insight and intelligence, the essential role of real-time integration in all factories of the future becomes clear.

The following are the five ways integration is enabling the Factory of the Future today:

Real-time integration enables the value chains supporting the Factories of the Future to continually accelerate, excel and improve with additional insight that drives future growth strategies. Bringing greater intelligence into each integration point across the value chains supporting the Factories of the Future leads to new technologies delivering greater lean management benefits. Real-time integration will deliver strong benefits in the areas of lean management, predictive maintenance, modular line setups, and the orchestration and collaboration of smart robots.

The Implementation Roadmap for the Factory of the Future shows how critical real-time integration is to the Factory of the Future’s vision being attained. Multidirectional layouts, modular line setups, sustainable production, the orchestration of smart and collaborative robotics and attainment of big data and analytics plans all are dependent on real-time integration. The following graphic from the study illustrates just how central integration is to the optimizing of plant structure and plant digitisation.

By integrating large-scale enterprise systems including those from SAP, Salesforce and others with legacy, 3rd party and homegrown systems, every area of production quality will improve. The most urgent need global manufacturers have is finding new ways to improve product, process and service quality without raising costs. Improving the quality of these three dimensions makes any manufacturer more trusted and successful in selling next-generation products.  By aggregating data using real-time integration so that big data and advanced analytics can be used to find new patterns, some of the world’s most well-known manufacturers are excelling on product quality. To produce cylinder heads at its plant in Untertürkheim, Germany, Mercedes-Benz uses predictive analytics to examine more than 600 parameters that influence quality. Mercedes-Benz is an early adopter of using Big Data and advanced analytics to improve quality management and bring high precision to engineering. Bosch has implemented software that analyzes data about its production of fuel injectors in real time. The software monitors process adherence and recognises trends. It automatically transmits information about deviations to operators, allowing them to improve the process accordingly.

Real-time integration across and within manufacturing systems enables multi-directional layouts of production workflows. The Audi R8 manufacturing facility in Heilbronn, Germany, does not have a fixed conveyor so the teams there has greater multidirectional flexibility in building customised vehicles.  Real-time integration across the Audi factory floor is essential to provide R8 production teams with the specifics of how they can best collaborate and deliver the highest quality vehicles in the shortest amount of time. Real-time integration is enabling driverless transport systems, guided by a laser scanner and radio frequency identification technology in the floor, which moves the car bodies through the assembly process. These systems enable assembly layout changes quickly with no impact on existing production. Enabling real-time integration often involves extensive field mapping between different systems, which is a lengthy and error-prone process. Integration technology provider enosiX has developed a unique, real-time integration technology that obsoletes the need for field mapping and supports bi-directional data updates.

Enabling the Factory of the Future’s production operations to flex in response to rapidly changing customer requirements is entirely dependent on real-time, reliable integration of production and customer-facing systems. The implications of the study on the future of manufacturing underscore just how critical it is for manufacturers to be agile enough to create entirely new business models while gaining insight and intelligence into how they can continually improve lean manufacturing. When real-time integration unifies a value chain for any manufacturer, their speed, scale and ability to simplify the complex processes required to serve customers turns into a formidable competitive advantage.

(c)iStock.com/sorbetto

• 93% of global product leaders say that predictive maintenance combined with real-time equipment monitoring enabled by integration is a must-have for factory planning today.
• 75% of global product leaders plan to implement factory of the future initiatives and programs in the next five years or less, starting with Industry 4.0
• 67% of automotive executives expect that new technologies enabled by real-time integration will enable their teams to reach and exceed lean management and continuous improvement goals starting this year and accelerating through 2030.

Boston Consulting Group’s recent article, The Factory of the Future provides insights into a recent global survey the consulting firm conducted of more than 750 manufacturing product leaders from leading companies in three industrial sectors: automotive (which includes suppliers and original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs), engineered products, and process industries.

The survey’s objective is to define the vision for the factory of the future in 2030.  Determining long-term benefits and the roadmap to implementation are also goals of the study Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and its research partner, the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, achieved. The Factory of the Future is a vision for how manufacturers should enhance production by making improvements in three dimensions: plant structure, plant digitisation, and plant processes.

Five ways integration fuels the factory of the future’s growth

Real-time integration based on intelligent objects that connect diverse enterprise systems including SAP, Salesforce and others is the foundation that manufacturing companies must adopt to excel in their Factory of the Future efforts. These real-time objects illustrate the future of Application Programmer Interfaces (API).  APIs that will fuel and drive the Factory of the Future will enrich each real-time integration points across manufacturing networks. Intelligent Objects pervasively used today are the precursors to the most valuable APIs that will enable Factories of the Future tomorrow. With APIs continually improving and gaining the capability to provide insight and intelligence, the essential role of real-time integration in all factories of the future becomes clear.

The following are the five ways integration is enabling the Factory of the Future today:

Real-time integration enables the value chains supporting the Factories of the Future to continually accelerate, excel and improve with additional insight that drives future growth strategies. Bringing greater intelligence into each integration point across the value chains supporting the Factories of the Future leads to new technologies delivering greater lean management benefits. Real-time integration will deliver strong benefits in the areas of lean management, predictive maintenance, modular line setups, and the orchestration and collaboration of smart robots.

The Implementation Roadmap for the Factory of the Future shows how critical real-time integration is to the Factory of the Future’s vision being attained. Multidirectional layouts, modular line setups, sustainable production, the orchestration of smart and collaborative robotics and attainment of big data and analytics plans all are dependent on real-time integration. The following graphic from the study illustrates just how central integration is to the optimizing of plant structure and plant digitisation.

By integrating large-scale enterprise systems including those from SAP, Salesforce and others with legacy, 3rd party and homegrown systems, every area of production quality will improve. The most urgent need global manufacturers have is finding new ways to improve product, process and service quality without raising costs. Improving the quality of these three dimensions makes any manufacturer more trusted and successful in selling next-generation products.  By aggregating data using real-time integration so that big data and advanced analytics can be used to find new patterns, some of the world’s most well-known manufacturers are excelling on product quality. To produce cylinder heads at its plant in Untertürkheim, Germany, Mercedes-Benz uses predictive analytics to examine more than 600 parameters that influence quality. Mercedes-Benz is an early adopter of using Big Data and advanced analytics to improve quality management and bring high precision to engineering. Bosch has implemented software that analyzes data about its production of fuel injectors in real time. The software monitors process adherence and recognises trends. It automatically transmits information about deviations to operators, allowing them to improve the process accordingly.

Real-time integration across and within manufacturing systems enables multi-directional layouts of production workflows. The Audi R8 manufacturing facility in Heilbronn, Germany, does not have a fixed conveyor so the teams there has greater multidirectional flexibility in building customised vehicles.  Real-time integration across the Audi factory floor is essential to provide R8 production teams with the specifics of how they can best collaborate and deliver the highest quality vehicles in the shortest amount of time. Real-time integration is enabling driverless transport systems, guided by a laser scanner and radio frequency identification technology in the floor, which moves the car bodies through the assembly process. These systems enable assembly layout changes quickly with no impact on existing production. Enabling real-time integration often involves extensive field mapping between different systems, which is a lengthy and error-prone process. Integration technology provider enosiX has developed a unique, real-time integration technology that obsoletes the need for field mapping and supports bi-directional data updates.

Enabling the Factory of the Future’s production operations to flex in response to rapidly changing customer requirements is entirely dependent on real-time, reliable integration of production and customer-facing systems. The implications of the study on the future of manufacturing underscore just how critical it is for manufacturers to be agile enough to create entirely new business models while gaining insight and intelligence into how they can continually improve lean manufacturing. When real-time integration unifies a value chain for any manufacturer, their speed, scale and ability to simplify the complex processes required to serve customers turns into a formidable competitive advantage.