I’ve been ranting about the complexity of IT and the need to simplify it. And when most organizations talk about it, they expect the technology industry – companies that make servers, software, services, and devices – to do something about it. Dell has gone on record as saying we are going to focus our efforts, resources and process-driven approach to do just that. What doesn’t get as much chat, however, is the staffing side of the equation. In a speech recently at the Gartner Data Center Conference, Jim Soderbery, senior vice president, Storage Foundations Group at Symantec talked about what seems to be an accident waiting to happen. As IT gets more complex, the ability for IT managers to recruit, train and retain expert talent is getting much harder.
After the speech I checked out the report “State of the Data Center Research report” In the study by Symantec, datacenter managers said:
n 52 percent of respondents report their data centers are currently understaffed
n 86 percent of respondents have difficulty finding qualified applicants
n 68 percent report staffing is challenging because data centers are too complex to manage
n 60 percent believe staff skill sets are too narrow
n 57 percent indicate that employees’ skills do not match their current needs
What does this mean? It means that unless IT is simplified, organizations are headed for a train wreck. Fewer and less experienced people are being asked to manage increasingly complex IT. The question you have to ask is whether your IT infrastructure is headed for the same disaster. Are you seeing it coming? I’d be interested in hearing what your organization is planning to do about it.
Tags: cooling, data, datacenter, disaster recovery, energy, IT, power, server, technology, thermal
