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ITM Curriculum Revisions Approved

March 27th, 2015 Comments off

Fall 2015 will bring some changes to the ITM curriculum. ITMD 461, Internet Technologies and Web Design will be replaced by ITMD 361, Fundamentals of Web Development. The content of the course is essentially unchanged, but the new title and course description reflects the fact that the extended discussions of Internet technologies and design that were originally included in the course are no longer covered. The design component will move to another new course, ITMD 362, Human-Computer Interaction and Web Design, which will replace ITMD 434, Human-Computer Interaction. This restores the Web design component formerly included in ITMD 461, moves the HCI component formerly in ITMD 434 from a full semester to 9 weeks, and allows students to apply their new HCI knowledge through hands-on project-based learning. The first offering of ITMD 362 is planned for Spring 2016.

Additionally two new minors are offered in ITM to prepare students in other majors to be admitted to our graduate programs. The Information Technology Foundations minor prepares students to enter the Master of Information Technology and Management degree, and the Cyber Security Foundations minor will prepare students to enter the Master of Cyber Forensics and Security degree. The existing minor in Information System Administration has had a major revision to incorporate current courses and is now one of our strongest minors. Let your friends in other majors know about these!

See the Curriculum Revision document for full details!

Cloud Computing – 7 Million Job Opportunities

April 11th, 2013 Comments off

By Glenn Ferrell – IIT Alum and owner of gfWEBsoft LLC (http://www.gfwebsoft.com/)

Timing is everything, and students focusing on Information Technology and Management seem to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to take advantage of significant growth in cloud computing jobs.

7 Million New Cloud Computing Jobs by 2015

According to a Forbes review of an IDC report, sponsored by Microsoft, demand for “cloud-ready” IT workers will “grow by 26% annually through 2015. IDC expects that as many as 7 million new cloud-related jobs will be available worldwide by that time”. The author of the IDC report (Cushing Anderson) says that “Unlike IT skill shortages in the past, solving this skills gap is extremely challenging, given that cloud brings a new set of skills, which haven’t been needed in the past.”

Cloud-Related Positions Going Unfilled

According to the Forbes article, “lack of training, certification or experience” are the top three reasons cloud positions go un-filled. Anderson says several skill sets are key to building and maintaining cloud capabilities within organizations. These are listed in the table below, along with projected openings for 2015:

Job Type Openings by 2015
Management 794,945
IT systems and operations 630,414
Project and program managers 555,591
Help desk and end-user support 549,241
Application development and maintenance 525,829
Business analysts 502,692
Network, telecom, security, and web development 481,411

From IDC Report as Reported in Forbes 12/21/2012

In an earlier article Forbes’ writer Joe McKendrick suggested what IT professionals (future and present) should be learning in order to succeed in cloud-related jobs. His list seems to be right in line with the IDC report:

  • Business and financial skills: Know how to make a business case and calculate an ROI for cloud.
  • Technical skills: Java, .NET framework skills and knowledge of virtualization are important, and familiarity with open-source tools and languages is also valuable.
  • Enterprise architecture and business needs analysis: Be able to build a “roadmap” for which services should be provided by IT and which by an outside provider. Learn to speak the language of business as well as the language of IT professionals
  • Project management skills: Managing scope “creep”, contracts, service agreements and risk exposure are just some of the project management skills critical to implementing cloud. Cloud computing can cause end users to “run wild” with feature and service requests, so scope has to be contained. Also, remembering that cloud is supposed to cost less than equivalent on-premises services, skills in negotiating cloud vendors’ contracts, service level agreements and availability are critical to success.
  • Security and compliance: Understanding security protocols is important in all types of cloud deployment. Additionally, regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA have made navigating data-handling laws more complex. IT professionals with an understanding of both can be very valuable.
  • Data integration and analysis skills: Inside we have ERP systems, data warehouses, etc. Outside we have cloud-based services. Those who can analyze both sides and implement sound data integration between the two will be in high demand.
  • Mobile app development and management: The rise of mobile devices of all kinds has been key driver for the expansion of cloud solutions. A sound understanding of the basics is a valuable skill in cloud-implementation.

So how does the future look for those with a solid grounding in Cloud, Information Technology, and Management? All in all, it looks anything but cloudy.

 

References:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2012/12/21/almost-1-7-million-cloud-related-jobs-went-unfilled-in-2012-estimate/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2012/08/27/the-8-most-important-skills-needed-for-cloud-computing-today/

Microsoft announces Typescript, a superset of Javascript

October 1st, 2012 Comments off

Microsoft has announced the release of Typescript, a superset of Javascript, which they say will better allow developers to build large applications and will provide better support for large teams, especially when building server- and cloud-side applications. It was released under an Apache 2.0 open-source license.

TypeScript Website: http://www.typescriptlang.org/
ZDNet article: http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-takes-the-wraps-off-typescript-a-superset-of-javascript-7000004993/?s_cid=e550