FRAMINGHAM, Ma. – Increasing adoption of various networking technologies, especially those outside of traditional core routing and switching, is creating a skills gap in the market. An IDC white paper sponsored by Cisco Learning Institute found that there is a 60,000-person shortfall in the supply of networking talent and the skills shortage is expected to continue through to 2011.

Although there is a skills shortage in all areas of networking in North America, including routing and switching, the biggest shortages are in what Cisco Systems refers to as “advanced technologies,” which includes wireless, security, unified communications, video, etc.

“If you look specifically at North America, the traditional networking technologies like routing and switching, there’s probably a little gap but not very, very critical,” said Fred Weiller, director of marketing at Learning@Cisco. “I think the gap is mainly in the areas of new technologies, or what we call at Cisco the ‘advanced technologies’ — particularly in the areas of voice, wireless and security.”

Unified communications seems to be the biggest problem area, with 35 per cent of 500 surveyed network managers saying they have an immediate need for voice specialists. Nineteen per cent indicated an immediate need for wireless experts, and 11 per cent said they needed security specialists.

Perhaps the biggest problem is the common perception that there just aren’t enough jobs in IT, which is turning students away from computer science programs in college and university, Weiller said. While general IT workers and software developers are seeing their jobs dry up and go overseas, that’s not the case in the networking area, he told eChannelLine.

“If we stay with the current rate of enrollment that we see in colleges across North America, it’s likely to get worse because we haven’t reversed this trend that less and less students are enrolling in computer-related studies,” Weiller said.

Cisco has been doing awareness activities to reverse the trend, but it’s going to take time. Additionally, Weiller said that networking jobs aren’t going to disappear in a few years. Those jobs are going to be around for quite some time.

With not enough people with the appropriate skills to handle advanced networking technologies and an increasing demand for such technologies, there is a growing skills shortage.

“This white paper confirms what many managers in the workforce are already keenly aware of: There is an acute and growing need for more IT professionals,” said Cushing Anderson, an analyst at IDC. “With more and more businesses moving critical operational functions over to the network, the IT department is assuming a much more strategic role in the organization and needs its infrastructure to be designed, implemented and maintained by highly skilled, highly trained individuals.”

As adoption accelerates, businesses require people with the skills to deploy and maintain the technologies.

“There are tons of IT professionals out there, but right now people are looking for skills with wireless networking, security networking and unified communications networking skills,” Weiller said.

This column was written by Chris Talbot of ConnecIT

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