IT training all about the business

The hottest skill for IT professionals these days has nothing to do with bits and bytes - it's all about the business.

Because technology is playing an increasingly central role in all organisations, it's necessary for IT workers to get better at communicating with business people. This includes everything from understanding the ins and outs of the particular industry to knowing how to manage projects effectively.

Rob Chapman, founder of IT training firm The Training Camp, said he's seen a rapid growth in the demand for business management and project management courses in recent months. He told silicon.com: "My feeling is that because of the complexity of IT projects, and the way IT's becoming totally integrated into the business, [IT pros] need to understand how projects are run."

Chapman also believes it's a way for shrewd IT workers to make sure their jobs don't get outsourced to an offshore service provider. "You always need someone on this side of the pond to manage the projects," he said.

Jonathan Buttriss, executive director at IT training firm Computeach, agreed that the age of the techie is waning: "It's not acceptable for techies to be a geek in the corner anymore. Techies need to be able to communicate with the business."

Along with management skills, security continues to be a popular area for IT training. Chapman noted the "vendor-neutral" security courses are in particular demand, as real-world enterprise networks and systems are generally built from a variety of sources.

Getting down to nuts-and-bolts, SQL Server 2005 and .NET 2 are the hot technical training areas du jour, according to Chapman and Buttriss. Both are new Microsoft technologies which provide major improvements over previous versions, so organisations are keen to have their IT staff get up to speed so they can start reaping the rewards.

One skill-set Computeach's Buttriss believes has been over-hyped is voice over IP, or VoIP. Though he admits there's some need for IT staff to understand VoIP networks, in the end the technology will become part of the network and will be "transparent" to the end user.

He said: "By 2010 VoIP will be an absolute no-brainer."