The Impact of the Platform Economy on IT Operating Models

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Three recent articles, when considered together, present interesting implications for what it means for IT leaders as they manage and acquire talent. These changes have dramatic impacts on how IT has to manage its operations. The article links are below.

Info World - Cloud Tech Certifications Count More Than Degrees Now

Wired - There’s No Such Thing As a Tech Expert Anymore

What’s happening now — and next — in platform hiring

The platform economy shifts value creation activities outside of your firm. As platforms become more numerous and you depend on them more for B2C, B2B, and B2E activities, IT leaders face difficult choices about where they will place their platform bets. With new entrants continually entering the market and regulatory scrutiny increasing, acquiring the right talent will be even more challenging.

Since Ross Perot created EDS, the trend has been for IT to leverage service providers to deliver needed services. As Cloud has evolved from the original focus on infrastructure to include SaaS and PaaS offerings, the talent mix IT needs to manage their environment has become more complex.

Acquiring talent has become much more complicated as a result. Identifying candidates with the necessary capabilities now relies more on certifications rather than in the past. Degrees and experience are important; but now certifications are often an essiential requirement. Identifying which accreditations to look for are also important. They come in various forms

• Vendor Certification – Platform vendors provide comprehensive training on the proprietary tools and issue certificates at completion. Certificates from vendors such as AWS, Azure, Salesforce, Cisco, and others are often minimum requirements to be able to work on production environments.

• Professional Organizations – These programs focus on best practices that are platform agnostic. IT leaders must understand which organizations offer training that is most applicable to their organization and require those certifications. As an example, some groups focus on cryptography, Cloud, threat prevention, and open applications. Others have an industry or regional focus.

• Higher Education – Many colleges and universities offer short courses on a variety of subjects. The academic focus is useful for understanding the broader issues facing IT leaders as they make their plans for the future.

In partnership with HR, it is necessary to understand what skills are required and how to validate them during the recruiting process. Some requirements are minimums for consideration, others may need to be acquired within a specified time, and some are nice to have. Investing in the current team to give them these skills is critical to long term success.

The reality is IT will rely more on third-party providers and independent contractors. Organization charts as we have used them in the past will not support the IT operations because the boxes will be added, removed and repositioned based on the organizations needs. The capacity required varies over time and the skills continuously evolve. Your IT team must become vendor and contractor managers rather than tech experts.