Businesses are struggling to recruit employees with the skills needed to make a success of IoT, according to Canonical, creator of the IoT operating system, Ubuntu Core.
The company’s report, Defining IoT Business Models, for which 360 IoT professionals, developers and vendors were surveyed, found that 68 percent struggle to identify and hire employees with relevant IoT expertise.
The most difficult to hire are employees with knowledge of big data and analytics, with 35 percent of IoT professionals saying they struggle to recruit this skillset. This is problematic, because having a knowledge of big data and analytics is also identified as the most important skillset for IoT professionals, with 75 percent of respondents deeming it to be necessary attribute for anyone claiming to be an IoT expert.
The next most hard-to-find skillsets for IoT professionals are knowledge of embedded software development (33 percent), embedded electronics (32 percent), expertise in IT security (31 percent) and an understanding of artificial intelligence (30 percent).
Read more: Inmarsat research: Skills gap threatens IoT innovation in energy sector
Canonical: Train and retain
Explaining the findings of the study, Mike Bell, executive vice president of IoT and devices at Canonical, told Internet of Business that, since the IT skills gap has posed a challenge for years, the industry is “bombarded with guidance on how to better hire, train and retain talent.”
“What our research uncovered, though, is that there is an opportunity in the Internet of Things arena for companies to take a different approach entirely: to change their practices in a way that would reduce their need for scarcely-available talent, and make the job at hand achievable with the team they have,” he continued.
“Instead of chasing a shrinking pool of skilled IoT technicians, or waiting for the next generation of talent that may or may not arrive, companies can simplify the technologies behind their IoT implementations to make their deployments easier to build, manage and upgrade. That enables greater agility, reduces the hiring burden on companies, and accelerates their ability to derive real returns on their IoT investments.”
Read more: IoT held back by skills gap, say a third of execs