The last few months have seen the world adjust to new ways of living during this pandemic and businesses shift how their staff are working. Many people have spent this time unable to work from home due to the nature of their work, or indeed there have been many who have not been able to work at all. Network Engineering has been one of the areas that have had to keep going with Network Infrastructures accommodating the increased number of remote workers. IT departments have had to ensure that those who had never worked remotely before but were able to with the right technology and the correct services in place.
What happens when all this is over? There has been speculation how this will change our working environments for the foreseeable future and not just for the ‘now’ and our networking professionals will be reassessing just how they can adapt. Business will be evaluating how they managed during this pandemic, what they need to concentrate on, or put on the back burner and what needs greater investment in. As a networking professional what can you be doing or improving upon to ensure that you have the skills that will be in great demand? Maybe you are looking at making the move into a technical role following on from how you have seen tech help keep the world operating the last few months? As things are beginning to ease, are you in the mindset that it is too late to try and add another string to your bow? If you are, then change your thinking and look at it as embarking on a new skill that will be on-going and help you to improve your career opportunities.
What has been highlighted by IT leaders that has stood out for them that should be worth investing your time in?
Agility, resilience, speed, security, how fast networks can respond to changes in real-time with the businesses evolving technology needs, coping with the influx of new devices and remaining flexible and easy to manage are all essential attributes. Software-driven technologies, AI, ML, edge, 5G, pervasive security, automation, cloud-based services are a few key areas to look at.
Cloud computing for the delivery of computing services has increased phenomenally. Any skills relating to Cloud networking will keep on increasing, as businesses recognise that operational costs can be reduced, and infrastructures can be run more efficiently and be scaled accordingly when required. Businesses are asking for experts in this area, with skills in cloud-based design and architecture within AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, VMWare, Red Hat and IBM.
There were concerns in the beginning about the security around the cloud but today, as cloud security has improved, there is more confidence in cloud data being safe and secure. Security can be a shared responsibility between the provider and the business, so this makes way for the need for cloud professionals with specialisation in cloud security skills. There is a significant need for professionals who understand cloud security and can leverage the cloud security tools offered by organizations like Microsoft and AWS to name a few. This need will only continue to increase. The CCSP (Certified Cloud Security Professional) certifications are in demand and can open up a wide range of career opportunities. As companies still feel unsettled by the control element that can be taken away from them using the Cloud, by being able to offer this skill will put you in good stead.
Data is the backbone of a successful business. There are data centres and warehouses that store terabytes and huge amounts of data. Someone who is a Data Recovery specialist has the skills to save a company from absolute disaster. Data recovery experts can also be forensic experts obtaining data to help governments and police recover deleted, hidden or destroyed data. There are also certifications you can take such as CDRP (Certified Data Recovery Professional).
Lots of businesses will have felt the impact of the shift of working from home and been alerted to threats to their systems. Many businesses have their strategies in place and review the plans regularly. Prior to this pandemic many businesses who had their pandemic strategy in place, never really thought there would be a need for such a strategy, as you have to turn the clock back in history to when the last global pandemic was and even then, when the Novel influenza virus emerged in the Spring 2009, the world certainly didn’t grind to a halt as it has with Covid-19. At the beginning of this one, businesses had to move quick to dust off, review and update their strategies to minimise the impact on business operations, revenue, and reputation with the lockdown in sight. Cyber-attacks, data breaches, system failures and other threats have even hit the biggest and most tech-savvy businesses. By understanding business continuity management, you can provide business with an effective framework to help identify and prioritise against future threats.
With the rise in remote working and this method of working set to continue once the pandemic has subsided, skills that support the whole ‘working from home’ model will be in demand. This will cover a whole array of areas, such as troubleshooting and resolving network access issues and ensuring that network connections are optimised and network security. With office workers and remote workers sending data and voice packets over the network, QoS (Quality of Service) is essential. Automation, data analysis, AI are all skills that businesses are seeing an increase in.
IoT is growing at an incredible rate and more so with the need of remote working. Networks need to be able to cope with the influx of devices and the demand of IoT skills will continue to grow. Some areas within IoT to look at are:
ML (Machine Learning) – Business want to be able to take advantage of the data IoT devices produce. Skilled engineers who are capable of building algorithms that can deliver insights analytics from overwhelming data sets are in great demand and will continue to be so.
NoSQL/Cloud “(non-SQL”, “non-relational” or “not only SQL” ) – Businesses who do not have the capability to store data obtained from IoT devices can choose a partial cloud model to offset their server usage. So, professionals with experience in Cloud solutions, as mentioned previously such as Azure, AWS etc, are sought after, so they have enough processing power to analyse the huge amount of data and gain insights. Databases that are adaptable NoSQL, are also essential to the integration of the data delivered from IoT, into back-end infrastructures. NoSQL databases provide a mechanism for the retrieval and storage of the data modelled in means other than the tabular relations method used in relational databases.
Data Visualisation – To uncover the hidden insights and present the wealth of data accurately collected by IoT devices, requires effective visualisation. Big data drives IoT, and the job of software engineers, network engineers, and UX engineers is to make the data work seamlessly for users. Developers with skills to solve infrastructure problems, innovate solutions, with the ability to read and interpret data in a meaningful way will be most sought after.
Security – It is essential to have engineers skilled in security around IoT. Data must be kept securely, and so developers who are familiar with vulnerability assessment, PKI security (public key infrastructure), ethical hacking and wireless network security will continue to be key, much-demanded skills!
There are plenty of remote training programs you can look at while working from home, or even embark on once you are back to work. With e-learning courses in an abundance, even network vendors such as Cisco and VMWare have courses available online.
If you are working within another area of IT and want to get into Networking after seeing how our networks and mobile infrastructures have enabled us to keep us all connected, then some form of certification will help to springboard that move. Even if the experience is lacking, it demonstrates initiative, commitment, and self-motivation, which are all fantastic personal attribute to have!
