Security tops the bill in training poll

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Computerscope polled its readership on the subject of ICT Training and received a strong response.

Among the questions posed, we asked the readership to indicate in order of priority the areas of training that they saw as very important, important or unimportant. As a key indicator of where training effort is directed, the graph shows that the cornerstones of ICT are still as important as ever, but that certain areas may not be as much of a priority as they once were.

Security leads the way in the positive ranks as important or very important with a combined score of 91% showing that the ever changing landscape of ICT security demands constant training to provide for secure business, but the results do show that voice and data and web development may not fare as well. “We see security as probably the hottest topic in IT training at the moment” said Steven Purcell Irish sales manager for Global Knowledge, “This reflects our schedule in that we have three specific security focused courses running in September alone”.

 The fact that software development scored the highest portion of the “not at all important” sector more reflects the full range of companies that responded rather than some terminal decline in the sector. However the relatively low performance of voice and data in the high importance sector would suggest that companies are still coming to terms with converged networks and the benefits of IP telephony and data networks that can handle video and voice as easily as data. As such, the training need is reflecting the slow burn of this technology.

 Operating systems, database development and business applications all fare about where expected, showing strongly in the priority of training. These areas however are ubiquitous across various sectors where ICT may not fully represent line of business operations. These crucial pillars of ICT would, as expected, represent the bulk of training, being the corner stone of most IT departments irrespective of the core business of the organisation. 

 In general, the, yet to soar, voice and data and the perhaps waning web development seem to be the real indicators of current trends. Pure web development is less important to companies due to the advance of content management systems and the diversity of technologies available to allow non-programmers to construct complex functionality based on templates and rule structures.

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