2014 Predictions: CA Technologies sees skills issue driving problems

You know it is Christmas and New Year when the IT industry starts producing its predictions for the coming 12 months, so expect to see a few more follow this lead from CA Technologies over the next couple of weeks.

According to John Michelsen, chief technology officer, CA Technologies, his Top Five tips for 2014 range from a growing skills crisis through to security issues still being a major pain.

His number one pick is a mounting skills crisis, particularly if companies wish to really gain the business benefits promised by social, mobile and cloud technologies. He sees these potential powerful assets causing tremendous disruption in the enterprise, which means a dramatic shift in the culture and skills base within the enterprise.

The 30 fastest-growing occupations in the next decade  are all expected to demand workers skilled in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). But the supply of these highly skilled workers is not growing fast enough to meet the demand. By investing in tailored programs for different age groups and grade levels and creating opportunities for youth to excel in STEM, a new generation of innovators and leaders will be created.

The companies that take a proactive approach to understanding and managing this skill shortage - by embracing an open approach to community-based development in the short term and investing in technical education in the long term - will emerge as winners.

His second pick sees the growth of Apps and APIs through the widespread adoption of cloud computing, mobility and other technical advances, which have driven fundamental changes in how applications are created and deployed. They can now be rapidly assembled from in-house and/or provider-built components which reside independently, either on-premise (on any hardware platform), in a cloud, or both. In such an environment, the CIOs that move up the value chain to focus more on managing apps and services will increase their company's ability to drive business success.

IT is now primed to become application assemblers and brokers of business services. As SaaS, PaaS and IaaS provide turnkey access to compute capacity, IT will increasingly focus on composite business applications rather than the buy-build-manage model. To successfully make this transition, CIOs will need to increase their leverage of service-oriented style architectures through more efficient use and better control of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).

He sees a significant rise in `experience-centricity’ for 2014, with IT services being all about the consumer and organizations no longer in control of their brands. This is driving dramatic changes in how applications are developed, which will lead to a rise in experience-driven design and, in turn, necessitate DevOps-style development, a method of developing software where developers and IT operations professionals work together to speed up the delivery of new business services.

`Mobile First’ development will give way to `Experience First multi-channel approaches that  leverage smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, gaming consoles, laptops, or any other platform that a consumer is likely to be using. And with that in mind he sees an increased use of sensing technologies available in most modern mobile and wearable devices.

He predicts a demand for Accelerated Delivery, where consumer and employee demand for more engaging experiences increases at a dramatic pace as they become more comfortable with experience-driven, multi-channel applications and technologies such as sensing.

In this reality, social, mobility, cloud and DevOps are becoming one movement. These evolved experiences will drive a need for the same level of agility from every business. This fuels the DevOps movement that necessitates the reconstitution of traditional frameworks like ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), and extracts their most valuable concepts and adjusts them for modern, agile development.

Last but not least, he sees security staying way up the IT and business agenda.  Mobility, social, DevOps and cloud adoption have effectively opened the enterprise and invited new business risk into today's workplace. The rapidly expanding and collaborative open enterprise diminishes IT control and requires the CIO and CSO to find the delicate balance of enabling and protecting the business.

Ensuring that security is convenient and straight forward for users is one way to ensure productivity and business enablement. Coupled with a `predict, prevent, and prepare’ for a possible breach approach, IT will gain a good start on balancing business enablement with business protection.

The management of mobile/social IT will become less about managing and securing the devices themselves, and more about managing and securing the mobile applications and mobile data, all while delivering a compelling and engaging user experience.

He also sees the hype still surrounding `the cloud dimming significantly in 2014 as people realise it’s just the way of doing business. In fact, cloud is now the key enabler for other disruptive technologies like social and mobility. The downside of this, of course, is that many businesses will also be affected by the mounting skills crisis, though this in turn could lead to wider adoption of service-provider hosted public and private cloud services.

“In 2014, IT will drive stronger engagement models between the business and the services it delivers,” he said. “CIOs are getting more comfortable giving up control while providing an end-to-end service delivery model, tying in all the required elements and technologies to create an integrated user experience. By focusing on delivering systems of engagement through mobility and relying more confidently on application performance management, IT is now moving more strongly into the role of a trusted advisor and service broker in this brave new world of dynamic IT.”