06 March 2024

With the rapidly evolving IT space, the UK’s enterprises are having a tough time sourcing the necessary skillsets to maintain operations efficiently and securely…

The last few years have seen monumental change throughout the IT world. Between the rise of remote/hybrid working required by the COVID-19 pandemic and the evolution of widespread use of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), the entire ecosystem has seen a fundamental shift – one requiring a whole new host of skills.

Both changes – arguably the biggest experienced with IT in a decade – have significantly increased the risk of cyber-attack. Keith Dube, director, solutions architect, product, Park Place Technologies, reports that “the single biggest change to in-demand skills in UK networking in 2024 is focus on security. The rise in cyber-attacks to access, modify or destroy sensitive data increases the need for professionals with experience in threat detection, network security and incident response.”

Compounding the issue further, “the skills shortage in our sector spans across multiple disciplines and roles with competing demand both ‘client side’ and within the supply chain for the same people,” says Jon Healy, COO at Keysource. “One of the key areas that this is negatively impacting is the ability for organisations to make informed decisions. Organisations are no longer confident in the quality of the information that is being provided - which in some cases is resulting in hesitancy in decision making and a greater level of governance being applied.”

Accordingly, one question that we’re seeing time and time again, is ‘how will my business cope?’

Economically inactive

While the UK’s unemployment rate has fallen to 3.8%, economic inactivity levels for 16–64-year-olds have risen by 100,000 in the last year alone. In a post-pandemic marketplace, fewer people are willing to take on undesirable/challenging work unnecessarily, while those closer to retirement age – many of them highly educated, well-paid and formerly in tech roles - have opted out in favour of leisure pursuits and time with loved ones following a lifetime of hard work.

I’ve seen firsthand that experienced, senior engineers and network operators are taking early retirement and are not being replaced due to a lack of qualified personnel.

Dube agrees: “with engineers retiring and a lack of incoming talent the current workforce may not be able to meet these demands. Cybersecurity in particular requires specialised knowledge and skills that may not have been a priority for network professionals in the past. There is a need for upskilling and reskilling of the existing workforce to bridge the skills gap.”

“It is a challenging time for some organisations given the limited resource pool,” concurs Healy. “One solution is to look at changing the way projects have been traditionally done with increased collaboration across the supply chain and learning from more mature sectors, particularly in relation to sustainability.”

Given the scale of this challenge – one that is shared by most enterprises in the UK and abroad – solutions must be found, and fast.

“As an industry we have proven to be good at adapting and reinventing ourselves to cope with the fast-moving environment we operate in,” asserts Healy. “But this approach would involve getting people to work together in a way they never have before and spending time to learn from those who have overcome similar challenges.”

Soft vs tech skills

The employment environment in 2024 is a tricky place to be for enterprises – some 22% of workers are planning a move this year. With high rates of employee migration, in-house upskilling/retraining is being touted as one potential solution for gaining much-needed skills without having to endure the rigmarole of continual re-hiring.
Dube says that organisations must invest in continual up-skilling to keep pace with accelerating development: “in-house upskilling is an effective solution to address the rapidly evolving technological landscape, while retaining institutional knowledge and ensuring that the workforce is prepared to adapt to changes and meet the specific demands of the future.”

However, Healy believes that while in-house upskilling may be one solution, “there isn’t much time and this is a specialist industry, currently with little regulation, and so without the right people and the right advice now - there could be some very expensive mistakes being made.”

Specifically within the data centre world, the Keysource 2023 state of the industry report finds that speed, substance, and sustainability are key considerations for success.

Reflecting on the survey, Healy reports that “nearly half of our respondents chose to sub-contract more projects or services than they had planned, echoing our experience that the industry is turning even more to supply chain partners or relationships to keep to programme timescales. According to the majority of our respondents, this approach had a positive impact including better quality and quicker delivery, with the inevitable trade off of a higher cost.”

And it’s not just technical skills threatening the UK’s networking sector. According to the ‘Essential Skills Tracker 2023,’ a study of more than 2,000 workers showed that 51% had missed out on essential soft skills building opportunities and cost £22.2 billion annually.

“As technology becomes more integrated into various aspects of business soft skills, such as communication, teamwork, leadership, and emotional intelligence, complement technical skills and are necessary for success in the workplace,” says Dube. “Soft and technical skills are both essential for individuals to thrive in a rapidly evolving technological environment.”

Enter automation

The entry of AI into the networking arena has opened many possibilities for enterprises, from intelligently detecting increasingly sophisticated, and – critically – new forms of cyber-attack before the threat develops, to automating time-intensive tasks previously performed manually by human employees.

“We are starting to see AI, in some form, being used to take on time consuming administrative tasks,” says Healy. “The hope is that this will free up time for senior executives to train the next generation of data centre professionals to support clients and help address the skills shortage. Moving forward, AI will play an even more significant role in predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, and network optimisation.”

“Organisations remain focussed on improved operational efficiencies and customer experience through ‘zero-touch automation’ resulting in a significant impact on the workplace,” adds Dube. “As AI and ML continue to advance, certain tasks and roles will be automated, leading to changes in job requirements and the need for new skills.”

Indeed, Dube believes that job automation will include human intervention such as approvals before a task runs reducing routines from hours of monotonous tasks to a single-click freeing up human workers to focus on creative thinking; problem solving; and decision-making. “However, we are unlikely to see full automation - we are likely to see a sharing of skills, the machine assisting instead of replacing the human,” concludes Dube.