Remind Your Bosses That Big Data Experts Are Hard To Find

We know that big data skills are in short supply and experts in the field command serious money. You may not be able to fill all the gaps for analytical expertise in your company, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t remind management that the gaps exist.

Magnifying glass picture from Shutterstock

Gartner analyst Brian Burke made that point at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit, which I’m covering as part of our ongoing World Of Servers series.

“Some of you are already wrestling with the issues of big data inside your organisation,” he said. “Some of you know that it’s coming but aren’t quite sure how to prepare for it. This challenge is about skills that aren’t just about IT. They’re clearly also about business. All of these things are coming together and we cannot just do it alone as an IT organisation.”

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“You must help your organisation gain clarity so there are two sides ot the house working together in unison. Communicate the risks associated with the challenge of acquiring or growing those skills in your organisation.”

From an IT perspective, those shortages might be obvious, but management often moves to a different beat. Gartner surveys of CEOs suggest that just 11 per cent worry about skills shortages.

Being a harbinger of doom isn’t always a popular move, but it’s sometimes a necessary one. “You may not be able to resolve this problem, but that’s not your job: your job is to help people understand where the danger exists,” Burke said.

Lifehacker’s World Of Servers sees me travelling to conferences around Australia and around the globe in search of fresh insights into how server and infrastructure deployment is changing in the cloud era. This week, I’m in London for the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit, looking at how to plan and deploy your overall enterprise architecture for maximum business value and efficiency.