Monday Morning Impact – May 27
IT Skills Shortage Expected to Impact Nine out of Ten Organizations by 2026, according to IDC
A growing IT skills shortage is impacting organizations in all industries and across all regions. In a recent International Data Corporation (IDC) survey of North American IT leaders, nearly two thirds said that a lack of skills has resulted in missed revenue growth objectives, quality problems, and a decline in customer satisfaction. And the situation is not expected to get any better. IDC predicts that by 2026, more than 90% of organizations worldwide will feel the pain of the IT skills crisis, amounting to some $5.5 trillion in losses caused by product delays, impaired competitiveness, and loss of business.
Artificial intelligence (AI) skills are currently the most in-demand skill for most enterprises, and IT Operations are a close second. A variety of cloud skills, including architecture, data management and storage, and software development, are also among the ten most needed skills identified by survey respondents. This situation is further compounded by the need for additional, non-technical skills, such as digital business skills, human skills, and leadership skills.
“Getting the right people with the right skills into the right roles has never been so difficult,” says Gina Smith, PhD, research director for IDC’s IT Skills for Digital Business practice. “As IT skills shortages widen and the arrival of new technology accelerates, enterprises must find creative ways to hire, train, upskill, and reskill their employees. A culture of learning is the single best way to get there.”
Among the challenges organizations face when trying to expand the skills of their employees is resistance to training. Employees complain that the courses are too long, the options for learning are too limited, and there isn’t enough alignment between skills and career goals.
To overcome these challenges, IT leaders need to employ a variety of strategies to encourage a more effective learning environment within their organization, according to IDC. This includes everything from classroom training to hackathons, hands-on labs, and games, quests, and mini-badges. 70% of survey respondents indicated that they are already utilizing experiential learning methods, which includes labs, games, and hackathons. And generative AI (GenAI) has also found its way into the current training environment, with more than half the organizations surveyed using or piloting it for IT training.
The IDC report, “Enterprise Resilience: IT Skilling Strategies, 2024” presents a framework for enterprises hoping to stay ahead of a worsening global IT skills shortage.
Channel Impact®
Organizations and their channel partners need to demonstrate why learning matters to the organization, generally by aligning employee goals with business goals, and promoting continuous learning.
Sophos: Nearly All Organizations Hit by Ransomware Worked with Law Enforcement
Sophos has released additional findings from its annual “State of Ransomware 2024” survey, showing that 97% of survey participants hit by ransomware over the past year engaged with law enforcement and/or official government bodies for help with the attack.
In addition, more than half (59%) of those organizations that did engage with law enforcement found the process easy or somewhat easy. Only 10% of those surveyed said the process was very difficult.
Based on the survey, impacted organizations reached out to law enforcement and/or official government bodies for a range of assistance with ransomware attacks. Sixty-one percent reported they had received advice on dealing with ransomware, while 60% received help investigating the attack. Fifty-eight percent of those that had their data encrypted received help from law enforcement to recover their data from the ransomware attack.
“Companies have traditionally shied away from engaging with law enforcement for fear of their attack becoming public,” said Chester Wisniewski, director, Field CTO at Sophos. “Victim shaming has long been a consequence of an attack, but we’ve made progress on that front, both within the security community and at the government level. New regulations on cyber incident reporting, for example, appear to have normalized engaging with law enforcement, and this survey data shows organizations are taking steps in the right direction.”
Recent in-the-field findings from Sophos X-Ops’ Active Adversary report highlighted the continued threat of ransomware to small-and-medium sized businesses. Data from more than 150 incident response (IR) cases in 2023 found that ransomware was, for the fourth year running, the most frequently encountered attack type, occurring in 70% of IR cases Sophos X-Ops investigated.
Data for the State of Ransomware 2024 report comes from a vendor-agnostic survey of 5,000 cybersecurity/IT leaders conducted between January and February 2024. Respondents were based in 14 countries across the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific. Organizations surveyed had between 100 and 5,000 employees, and revenue ranged from less than $10 million to more than $5 billion.
Channel Impact®
The data underscore the need for collaboration and cooperation among the business community and law enforcement.
TD Synnex Launches Program to Accelerate Partner AI Opportunities via IBM watsonx
TD Synnex has launched its new IBM watsonx Gold 100 program, which aims to recruit 100 partners and equip them to achieve IBM’S Gold-tier partner status, enabling them to leverage IBM watsonx opportunities through a combination of IBM technology and the distributor’s value-add capabilities.
“When it comes to investment in AI, it can be difficult for partners to know where to start so we aim to provide not just solutions, but guidance, training and enablement to help them navigate the AI revolution successfully,” said Sergio Farache, Executive Vice President, Strategy and Global Technology Business at TD Synnex. “This comprehensive program is one example of how our Destination AI program can help partners harness the massive opportunity for growth available through AI, including the opportunities made possible by the IBM watsonx platform,”
The program includes training and enablement; business planning and sales acceleration initiatives; marketing and demand generation assets; and access to expert services and pre-sales support.
As part of this collaboration, TD Synnex intends to establish IBM watsonx Centers of Excellence in four locations in North America and Europe in 2024, where partners will be able to experience POC watsonx solutions and get personalized enablement support.
The IBM watsonx platform includes three core components designed to help businesses scale and accelerate the impact of AI with their trusted data. The three core components of the platform (watsonx.ai, watsonx.data and watsonx.governance) help businesses to customize their AI solution based on their needs. IBM watsonx also includes multiple AI assistants that help to automate workflows and implement AI across several business and technical functions.
Channel Impact®
Many partners are not fully capitalizing on AI-related growth and development potential in 2024 because of the inability to identify immediate opportunities relevant to their business profile. This initiative is designed to help mitigate those challenges.
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