Data management will be the most important skill for Middle East organisations in 2017, with Chief Data Officers taking on the role of driving organisation-wide skills growth, according to recent studies.
With the Internet of Things, cloud, and mobility driving IDC’s prediction of 10-fold data growth to 44 zetabytes by 2019, data management skills are dominating business needs.
Statistical analysis and data mining is the top in-demand skill for employers in the UAE and worldwide, according to a recent LinkedIn survey. Among additional top 10 skills worldwide are storage systems and management, and for the first time, data presentation.
“Middle East organizations need to prioritise data skills development not just for the IT team, but throughout all levels and roles in the organizations. Every employee needs to learn how to maximize their data analysis and visualization, to lead to better decision-making and enhanced business competitiveness. As a result, the Middle East will see the rise of Chief Data Officers into the boardroom to drive this data transformation,” said Andrew Calthorpe, CEO, Condo Protego.
Demonstrating the growing need for Chief Data Officers, market research firm Gartner predicts that 90 percent of large enterprises will have a Chief Data Officer by 2019.
Industry experts agree that Middle East organizations will need to prioritise data management with the rise in solutions that manage complex data, including hyper-converged infrastructure, software-defined technology, and all-flash storage.
Regionally, organizations are adopting VCE’s VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure, VMware’s NSX network virtualization platform for software-defined data centers and Virtual SAN software-defined storage, and EMC’s Unity and VMAX All-Flash storage.
Industry watchers also expect one of the biggest tech stories of the past year, the Dell-EMC merger, will make a significant Middle East impact on data management in 2017.
“Combining EMC’s hardware with Dell’s software provides Middle East organizations with all-in-one data management solutions. As a top Dell-EMC channel partner, Condo Protego is dedicated to supporting clients’ digital transformation journeys with the data solutions that best meet their business needs,” added Calthorpe.
