New Skills Are Needed To Work On Internet Of Things

The market could also create demand for a new kind of IT specialist those who can both engineer new products and process the data they collect, analysts and industry experts say. Photos of the day: Feb. 14, 2014 A 2011 McKinsey report estimated that the United States faces a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep data analytics skills, and 1.5 million managers and analysts to make business decisions based on their findings. In response to this shortage, GE has been training data specialists internally for the past few years, said Marco Annunziata, GEs chief economist. In 2011, the company opened a software center in San Ramon, Calif., where hundreds of new employees were hired and trained to consult on Internet projects across the company. For instance, a specialist from the center might help employees in GEs aviation subsidiary collect and analyze data from jet engines to improve production and fuel efficiency. Until the global IT workforce produces enough people who specialize in both data science and software or hardware engineering, we need to start developing them, to some extent, Annunziata said. GE hopes to train about 1,000 of these specialists. The company also looks for these interdisciplinary skills in new hires, Annunziata said. We will have more and more need for people who are a combination of data scientists and operation managers people who have both an understanding of how to use data, how to use analytics, and also an understanding of their own business lines, he said. Cisco, which recently announced plans to develop fog computing, or a network to collect data from devices making up the Internet of Things, is also looking for similar hires, said Joseph Bradley, managing director of Ciscos Internet of Things division. But the company is also looking for candidates who can collaborate with people in other industries, even outside the company, he said, to ensure Ciscos networks are supported. If you looked 10 years ago, across enterprises, 80 to 90 percent of innovation came from within the company. If you think about that now, its close to 50-50.
For the original version visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-it/new-skills-are-needed-to-work-on-internet-of-things/2014/02/14/b986fda4-94cb-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html