Upskilling for the Modern Data Center

Featured Article By Antonella Corno, Cisco

Today’s data center bears very little resemblance to the data center of just a few years ago. The rapid evolution of technology, while an overall boon for business, has created a dual challenge for many IT departments.  In addition to the need to invest in more powerful equipment, IT employees also need to invest in the training needed to keep their skills current. Only with a bench of properly trained staff will the potential of those technology investments come to fruition.

One advancement that has driven change in the data center, and therefore requires flexibility on the part of data center operators and engineers, is virtualization. The virtual switch has been a game-changer, in fact. Though virtual switches have been in use in some server operating systems for more than 10 years, their level of use today far surpasses that of the past.

Exploiting The Data Center’s Potential

Whereas in more readily structured computing environments, roles, workflows, and skill sets are well established, the open-endedness of a virtual data center that is so powerful can be potentially overwhelming. Given all the possibilities, each company, and each team, will find itself at a different stage with data center technology. The size, history, and culture of a company, as well as the nature of its real-world projects, will also play an important role in how it decides to approach the data center.

While some data center vendors will be focused on promoting specific products and solutions, comprehensive solution providers will ensure that all of the options are made available to customers, and that customers are educated enough to make the right choices for their business.

Because technology changes may in many instances modify customer IT organizational structure, they must represent a joint investment between the solution provider and the customer. The solution provider needs to invest capital and resources in enablement, and the customer has to be willing to step up and make the changes necessary to fully exploit the potential.

Training For A New Workforce

In these situations, when the technologies are so extensive and so new, the purpose of training should not be to simply teach employees how to join a crowd of already-trained individuals doing a particular job. The training must go beyond this and help companies create a new workforce—a workforce in which IT individuals are prepared to work within and outside of their current comfort zone.

An argument for this much more comprehensive approach to data center training can be found by looking at how data centers have historically been set up. Traditionally, companies have compartmentalized their IT department, with the result that there have been data center siloes: a computing department, a networking infrastructure department, and a storage department.

Virtualization is continuing to merge these functions, and thereby the separate siloes have started to break apart. While this dramatic shift has not been fully realized in every company yet, a pathway now exists to allow individuals to embrace data center innovation in full and bring their organizations to the next level. We have entered the era of the “data center architect.”

Bridging Complexities With The Data Center Architect

The term “data center architect” invites parallels with the construction industry. An architect designing a structure drafts a blueprint of the construction. Next the architect gathers needed information from a team of experts, who might otherwise be challenged attempting to coordinate with each other. Similarly, the data center architect, or cloud architect, looks at a company’s data center operation holistically and unites those with specific expertise in the server, network, storage, security, or software application arenas.

In the early phase of adoption, companies would do well to tap those most capable of serving as architect. These will be individuals who are not only technical experts in their discipline, but also fully capable of reaching out to the computing side of the house, extending their data center knowledge to them and interacting effectively with them. The architect will need to be a leader who can use vast experience in the field to harmonize the efforts of individuals as diverse as a server expert and a storage expert.

Data center architects appreciate the details but do not get mired in them. Instead, they function as a bridge across the complexities presented by virtualization, software integration, and application integration. Increasingly, they become less hands-on, but they must always maintain the capacity to understand, learn, and, where necessary, embrace the latest innovations.

The Evolving Data Center

Once it has identified its data center leaders, an organization can decide how much it wants to evolve–whether to merge all the skill sets (or most of them), or maintain a compartmentalized structure. The latter model must still rely upon strong leadership that coordinates the various technologies through a robust design, albeit with a slower cross-pollination of knowledge, and consequently a slower convergence.

There is no right or wrong evolution path for organizations embracing data center virtualization technology, but there is an ongoing need to understand the complexity, identifying individuals capable of making the right decisions and implementing changes according to what is best for the company. As part of this, organizations would be well served to maintain an open pipeline to those newly entering the workforce. While just a few years back, colleges emphasized exposure to basic networking knowledge, more and more educators are realizing the importance of imbuing students with awareness of new technologies, understanding that by doing so, there will be fewer gaps to be filled later.

There is a shortfall in data center knowledge, and it’s not just limited to a select few positions. It touches job roles from design, implementation and support engineers and data center network administrators to technology architects and business services. The shortfall also includes specialized engineer roles in unified I/O, data center network infrastructure and server virtualization.  The shortfall must be addressed in two ways: both by the new generation of workers fresh out of higher education who’ve received some training, and by current employees transitioning the new skills and new structure that today’s advanced technologies require. By addressing these skills gaps from all sides, companies and their employees will be well situated to face the current and future technology advances sure to arrive with lightning speed.

Antonella Corno has more than 20 years of experience in the IT/telecommunications/networking field in Europe and the U.S. in major networking providers. She is currently product manager for the Data Center/Virtualization, Cloud SDN product lines within Learning@Cisco, creating certifications and training for customers, partners and Cisco employees.