Top 10 IT Skills Essential for 2014

Skills That Pay The Bills

For 2014, mobility and cloud computing is constantly reaching new heights as compliance rules change, the quantity of data continues to increase and the need for security is mandatory in today's treacherous world of hackers.

For IT professionals dealing with clients in various verticals such as health care, education, government, legal and SMB, it's critical to be prepared to provide desired IT skills.

Based off hiring and salary surveys examined and compiled by New York-based IT and business training company Global Knowledge, read on to find out which top 10 IT skills are crucial for 2014.

10. Interpersonal

When it comes to working with clients, surveys have revealed that interpersonal communication skills are essential. By being able to openly communicate with a company, IT staff members can effectively and efficiently help end-users to address and implement necessary capabilities. Ultimately communication skills allows for progress within the organization and the execution of technology. Also having the ability and knowledge to speak in terms recognizable to sales, marketing, finance and manufacturing territories will open up different opportunities.

9. Cloud

Cloud computing has made its mark and continues to be in demand. As companies express interest in moving their IT systems to the cloud, the demand for knowledgeable cloud and managed services professionals will continue to soar. With clients interested in public, hybrid and private cloud, IT professionals should assess which type can benefit an organization's business needs. Providing infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) demands a robust knowledge from solution providers to deliver effectively.

8. Business Intelligence/Analytics

Vast amounts of data will continue to grow for clients of major corporations, the education, retail, and government space. By 2020, big data is expected to grow more than 40 times to surpass 35 Zettabytes (1 Zettabyte equals 1 billion terabytes.) The increasing volume of data requires IT professionals to get involved in business intelligence and analytics. To remain competitive, organizations are demanding these skills.

7. Security

Today, getting a tight grip on IT security is more than necessary for companies involved in all verticals. Of course as attacks, personal data theft and malware is more than possible, IT security professionals must test all aspects of vulnerability to prevent it from happening. With the media scrutinizing security failures, it is leading organizations to bring in IT security professionals for better management and control.

6. Database Administration

Big data will continue to grow as companiess collect information from websites, social media and third-party sources. With this data, companies are looking to use it to improve products, services and their clients.

As a database administrator, building logical data maps of organizational systems, collecting relevant information from various sources, compiling an analysis of the data and offering a thorough report will strongly benefit clients.

5. Project Management

The demand for project managers is increasing especially because of the need to develop long-term technology strategies. Having a project manager to oversee, set priorities, communicate with the organization and other developers involved, will ultimately help to successfully accomplish a project.

4. Mobile Applications and Device Management

BYOD has been a strong and popular practice for companies as the use of smartphones, tablets, and convertibles saturates the market. This helps to drive the requirement of experts specializing in mobility device management. According to surveys, the demand for these specialists is rated as the third most challenging to encounter.

3. Networking

As third place in many surveys, the demand for networking skills is evident. Networking professionals are necessary to help companies expand their wireless connectivity, deal with network traffic, BYOD and wireless devices provided by companies. Networking professionals should be competent in providing enterprise security, monitoring, virtualization, cloud management, and access control.

2. Help Desk and Technical Support

Outsourcing to third party companies can be cheaper but today it seems that organizations are bringing the help desk and technical support back internally. Since there is an increased use of mobile devices and company-provided web services, keeping the help desk at a company's headquarters or close to home is vital to keeping customers happy.

1. Programming and Application Development

Developers and programmers are reported to have the lowest unemployment rate at about 1.8 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As it is the most difficult position for employers to fill, organizations are preparing to shift from relying on third-party programming providers to bring it back to the company.