Careers in Information Technology are in high demand right now. Technological advances in cybersecurity, virtualization, service management, Big Data, and The Cloud require a different skill set than was needed 10-15 years ago. As new technologies emerge, so do the roles and responsibilities of those in the IT field.
A few months ago CIO published an article on the IT trends for 2015. In that article, Sharon Florentine identified six critical roles that businesses will need to stay competitive in 2015 and beyond. According to a report by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), Andrew Horne, Managing Director, describes the roles as follows [summarized]:
- Collaboration and Social Media Evangelist – With the growing digitization of business, this role will be responsible for understanding how and why employees collaborate and developing a collaboration and social media strategy.
- Technology Broker – A technology broker provides buying advice and negotiating support to divisions across a company to make sure purchasing decisions are sound and that technology’s compatible with existing systems.
- Information Insight Enabler – An information insight enabler is something of a big data role; they act as coaches, not just technologists, to help business leaders and front-line employees to derive greater insight from management reports. These folks understand the data and know best how to put it to business use.
- User Experience Guru – One of the major obstacles to adoption for traditional enterprise software is poor user experience. Therefore, a user experience guru is necessary to understand and improve the user experience and improve collaboration and productivity.
- Cloud Integration Specialist – As cloud usage increases, so does the number of business leaders purchasing their own applications and software. A cloud integration specialist is dedicated to navigating these coordination and integration issues as well as managing and educating purchasers and users on compatibility and on working with vendors to ask the right questions.
- End-to-End IT Service Manager – The concept of IT-as-a-service requires a role that integrates business, information and technology to create end-to-end IT services that increase flexibility while maintaining efficiency.
This is just the beginning. Once these roles are identified, a plan must be put in place to develop and hire the talent to fill them. For more information regarding these important roles and how to implement a workforce plan, see the full CIO article.
