IT operations is one of the oldest disciplines in the realm of IT. For decades, businesses have relied on ITOps to deliver and support the core IT systems that they rely on to function.
But the world of IT has evolved, and IT operations skills have evolved with it. Some ITOps skills that were once critical are less important today. At the same time, new types of key ITOps skills have emerged, and others have assumed newfound importance.
This article explains which IT operations skills are most important to businesses today. In so doing, it provides guidance to business leaders in formulating plans for organizing IT operations teams. It also offers an overview of how engineers can prime themselves for success in a modern ITOps career.
IT operations is the function within a business that is responsible for planning, implementing, and managing IT systems and resources. IT operations extend to many different domains within IT, including administration of servers and PCs, management of networks, delivering support to end users, and beyond.
Because almost every business today uses IT systems extensively, virtually every business needs some form of IT operations team staffed by engineers who have the requisite skills to ensure that IT systems operate as required.
Again, IT operations departments have existed for decades. But IT has evolved in many ways over the decades due to changes such as the following:
For these reasons and more, the ITOps skills that matter most today are different in many respects from those that were the most important 10 or 20 years ago.
To elaborate on that point, here's a look at ten in-demand ITOps skills today, along with an explanation of what makes each skill so important.
Fifteen or 20 years ago, virtually all of the data that a business relied on was stored in conventional databases, like MySQL, or in file systems. Today, however, businesses make heavy use of large-scale big data and data analytics technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, and Kafka, to name just a few.
As a result, IT operations engineers who have the skills to work with these data technologies are essential for ensuring that businesses can leverage their data resources effectively. Data administration skills were always an important part of ITOps, but they're more important today than ever.
Software-defined networking, which makes it possible to build abstract, virtual networks on top of physical network infrastructure, has exponentially increased the complexity of modern networks.
IT operations teams must now be able to support much more complex networks. They need the skills necessary to understand new types of network protocols, like the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). They need to be able to work with cloud-native firewalls, virtual private clouds, and other types of software-defined network tools and constructs. These types of skills were simply less important in the days when networks were less complex.
The systems that ITOps teams manage today have also grown significantly in complexity. Modern ITOps engineers need to be able to manage large-scale, distributed environments, such as Kubernetes clusters. They also need, in many cases, to be able to work across multiple types of operating systems, hypervisor platforms, container runtime technologies, and more. And they may need to administer workloads in the cloud in addition to traditional on-premises servers.
Although in some cases, system administrators are expected to bring cloud administration skills to the table, in other cases, IT operations teams dedicate specific roles to cloud administrators.
This makes sense given that a majority of workloads today run in the cloud, so the abilities to understand complex cloud architectures, work with cloud-specific tools like Identity and Access Management (IAM) frameworks, and troubleshoot cloud performance issues are essential skills for modern ITOps engineers.
Every year sets new records for the frequency and intensity of cybersecurity attacks. For ITOps teams, this means that security skills are paramount. Although IT operations engineers aren't usually expected to be solely responsible for security, they do need at least basic security skills, such as the ability to configure infrastructure according to the principle of least-privilege and to help manage incident response operations when a security issue arises.
As IT operations grow increasingly complex, the ability to manage IT operations projects grows increasingly important. If you have the skills necessary to help chart project timelines and resource requirements, as well as to ensure that project stakeholders do their jobs on time and as promised, you can contribute a crucial skill to modern ITOps.
To deliver maximum value, IT operations must align with business needs. ITOps teams need to understand which IT systems and features the business requires, how much money the business can invest in those systems, and how to update those systems over time to ensure that they continue to meet changing business needs.
To address these requirements, some IT operations teams deploy business analysts. Business analysts have the skills necessary to understand both IT and business requirements and to help guide IT operations teams as they work to support the business.
Documenting the way systems work, tracking changes over time, and explaining complex IT systems to non-technical business users are all important for ensuring that IT operations teams are efficient and effective. Technical writers, who have the skills necessary both to understand IT concepts and to explain them in a way that is easy to digest, can address these requirements.
In most cases, software development is treated as a separate function from IT operations, and ITOps engineers are not expected to have extensive coding skills. Nonetheless, a basic ability to develop software is becoming an increasingly important ITOps skill because it can help IT operations engineers write scripts, manage code-based configurations, and create integrations between systems.
Low-code development platforms can help IT operations teams take even greater advantage of basic coding skills by maximizing their productivity while minimizing the amount of code they have to write.
Systems engineering is a function within IT operations that helps ensure that systems are optimally designed and managed. Systems engineers have the skills necessary to assess IT systems and environments from a big-picture perspective, then determine how to optimize those systems to meet both technical and business requirements.
In a world where IT systems are constantly growing more complex, systems engineering helps IT operations teams stay on top of the complexity while also reining in costs and keeping IT aligned with business needs.
An IT operations team that brings all of the skills described above to the table provides the following benefits for the business:
Following are some commonly asked questions about modern ITOps skills.
Two main ways to develop modern ITOps skills are formal training programs and on-the-job experience.
If you already work in IT or a related field, experimenting with in-demand IT technologies is a good way to skill up. But if you want a more structured approach — or if you're new to the IT field — you may benefit from a training program that focuses on a specific in-demand part of ITOps, such as cloud administration or data processing.
IT operations salaries vary widely, and the specific skills you bring to the table are only one aspect of how much you can earn in IT. (Other aspects include factors like your overall IT experience and your ability to collaborate with people in other roles.)
That said, focusing on ITOps skills that are in very high demand or that align with areas where businesses are likely to be making increased IT investments in coming years is a good way to maximize your earnings. Security and cloud administration are two IT operations skills areas that fit this bill.
If you want to validate your IT operations skills — either just to confirm that you have expertise in a certain area or to prove it to an employer — you can earn a certificate. Organizations like CompTIA and ITIL offer various certifications related to IT operations skills.
Certifications are also available from many cloud providers, networking companies, and vendors associated with specific security or data analytics platforms.
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Kamal Rastogi is a serial IT entrepreneur with 25 yrs plus experience. Currently his focus area is Data Science business, ERP Consulting, IT Staffing and Experttal.com (Fastest growing US based platform to hire verified / Risk Compliant Expert IT resources from talent rich countries like India, Romania, Philippines etc...directly). His firms service clients like KPMG, Deloitte, EnY, Samsung, Wipro, NCR Corporation etc in India and USA.