IIT Information Technology and Management students recently presented and demonstrated their fall 2014 real-time communications projects to a group of communications professionals. Students were challenged to conduct research, and to test and deploy solutions as part of the project-based learning approach at IIT School of Applied Technology. Unlike a final exam, these students had to provide a working system and defend it in front of an audience of industry professionals—some with 30 years of experience.

Presentations included:

• The Gateway Project—A gateway SIP proxy interconnects the lab test beds enabling mobile calls to flow through to our NG911 test bed, voice-over IIT system, and WebRTC environment. (Student–Cruz Tovar)
• NG9-1-1: Performance Testing, a Production-Ready NG-911 System for the Counties of Southern Illinois—Our Emergency Services IP Network (ESINet) is used by the National Emergency Numbers Association to test the interoperability of elements of the ESINet architecture. Students supported the setup and testing, and also did performance tests for early adopters of the new technology. Both types of testing were described. (Student–Bart Dworak)
• Non-Repudiation of Voice-Over-SIP Conversations (Student–Yango A. Colmenares)
• VoIIT Project v2: Building a VoIIT Test Bed Using FreeSWITCH (Students–Nkechi Ijeh and Shefali Verma)
• SIP: SIP Performance Benchmarks—Automated Application of a SIP Performance Test Methodology to Various SIP Proxies: Results and Their Analyses. (Students–Yueqing Zhang, Arthur Clouet, and Oluseyi S. Awotayo)
• SIP Mobility—OpenBTS, a SIP-based cellular-phone system, was demonstrated, and its architecture, behavior, and use was described. (Student Adesola Ayodele)

See the complete story and pictures

IIT has two real-time communications labs, one at the Rice Campus in Wheaton and the other at IIT Main Campus. Learn more about the real-time communications labs by clicking here.

Starting in fall of 2014, the undergraduate Specialization in System Administration will see a significant change. The existing curriculum features two six-credit-hour courses, ITMO 451 and ITMO 452. ITMO 451 is essentially a Windows system administrator course, while ITMO 452 has been a UNIX sysadmin course taught using Solaris UNIX. As of fall, ITMO 456, Introduction to Open Source Operating Systems, will replace the existing ITM 302 Hardware and Operating Systems II requirement for all students and will form the foundation of the System Administration specialization, which will add three new three-credit-hour system administration courses (a similar change will be reflected in the Graduate specialization as well.) The revised undergraduate specialization will then look like this:

System Administration
Focuses on the administration and management of servers.
   ITMO 441 Network Applications and Operations
AND select two courses from the following:
   ITMO 450 Enterprise End-User System Administration
   ITMO 451 Enterprise Server Administration
   ITMO 453 Open Source Server Administration
AND select two courses from the following:
   ITMO 417 Shell Scripting for System Administrators
   ITMO 444 Cloud Computing Technologies
   ITMO 454 Operating System Virtualization
   ITMS 458 Operating System Security

Read more…

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:

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/

HACK NIGHT! “Me, My App, and Twitter”, August 27, 2012 at the IIT IdeaShop, 7 – 9pm
Register: iithacknight.eventbrite.com

Yes! A Hack Night!
A place to learn the magic behind coding. On this night we will have a two hour introduction to APIs and using Twitter to build a simple app.

Who should be there?
Everyone is welcome! Come if you’re interested in building something awesome or want to learn how to make your ideas a reality.

Which means that?
You really need to attend. We have food! No Walk-ins. Please register before coming.

Upcoming Hack Nights:
Aug. 27: Me, My App, and Twitter
Sept. 11: Building a Facebook App
Sept. 27: Karaoke with Twilio!
Oct. 11: People’s choice
Overnight Hackathon Challenge:
3pm October 20 – 4pm October 21
Over $5,000 in prizes!!!

Check out the resume workshops ITM sponsored last term.

Creating Employment for Yourself in a Tough Economy: Proactive strategies, tools, and tactics
If you confine your career strategy to jobs that are posted, you’re already behind the curve, together with most other job seekers—because you’re all chasing the same jobs. Learn to get hired before a job is advertised. Learn tools and tactics that will help you to create employment and construct a career—not just keep applying for job after job after job.

We are offering a series of 3 seminars outlining this proactive approach. Our instructor, Gabe Heilig, has been a personnel recruiter, manager of the downtown Washington, DC office of a national resume company, and owner of his own career services firm. In 1993, he won a nationwide RFP to open the only commercial resume service ever granted a lease to do business in the Pentagon. He has coached and written resumes for more than 5,000 professionals—from janitors to admirals, for CIA spies, the Director of White House Cyber Security, and the most recent Secretary of the Army.

Session 1: The Proactive Resume: What it is and how to write one
What makes a resume effective, or ineffective? We will examine this, using resumes attendees have submitted as well as “before and after” examples of resumes the instructor has written for his professional clients. He will provide a partially written, pre-formatted template that you can use to rewrite your resume, and we will review some of these rewritten resumes in Session #3.

Session 2: Creating employment: Niches, nodes, methods, probes, traps, moves, metaphors, paradigms, frames
Learn to think your way to the career you want. Whether the kind of job you want is advertised, or not, there are ways to create this type of employment. That’s what we will explore in this session. We will cover a lot of ground—from looking at the emerging Post-Job, Problem-and-Project Economy, to understanding how to escape the “cubicle horizon,” to learning how to interview effectively.

Session 3: Critiquing Your Rewritten Resume
You will have from February 3-7 to rewrite your resume, using the template given to you in Session 1. You are invited to bring your rewritten resume to Session 3, when we will critique as many as we can in the time we have.
http://ricelake.sat.iit.edu/itm/resumes/20120207_web.mp4

Illinois Institute of Technology Announces Master’s Degree in Cyber Forensics and Security
New Program Combines Technical, Legal, Policy and Compliance
In 2011, the average organizational cost of a data security breach in the U.S. was $5.5 million according to a report from Symantec and the Ponemon Institute. Cyber forensics continues to be used to recover evidence from security breaches. Cyber security and forensics issues have become increasingly complicated with technical, legal, policy, and compliance issues, and with such astronomical costs, there is a critical need in both the government and private sectors for professionals equipped to prevent, counteract and investigate cyber terrorism, cybercrimes and information security breaches.

To address these issues, Illinois Institute of Technology’s School of Applied Technology is offering a Master of Cyber Forensics and Security degree and graduate certificate programs in cyber security management and cyber security technologies, starting in fall of 2012. The program integrates legal courses from IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law curriculum and technical and managerial courses from IIT School of Applied Technology’s information technology and management curriculum. The program provides cyber security and forensics practitioners a thorough grounding in technology, legal issues, policy and compliance, providing an outstanding curriculum for those interested in cyber forensics and security and is a substantive follow-up degree for undergraduates majoring in information technology and management, computer science, computer information systems, or computer engineering.

The mission of the cyber forensics and security programs is to prepare students to assume technical and managerial leadership in information technology and cyber security. With a hands-on, reality-based approach to education, the cyber forensics and security program allows students to apply what they learn in class to solve real-life problems. Additional courses may be taken from the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law curriculum to give cyber security and forensics practitioners a thorough grounding in legal issues and compliance.

“The program provides an innovative experience where cyber forensics and security students work on cutting-edge, industry-sponsored projects that deal with technical, legal, policy and compliance,” said IIT School of Applied Technology Dean Robert Carlson. “This teaching philosophy prepares students to become innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders of the future.”

Recognized by industry professionals as a premier curriculum, IIT’s Cyber Forensics and Security (ForSec) programs are project-based and students are immersed in solving real problems, using current technologies and industry practices, while being guided by experienced faculty.

“In the IIT ForSec Lab, students use real computer viruses to learn and experience how they work, and also devise methods for protection of computers and mobile devices,” explains Professor Bill Lidinsky, director of security and forensics. “In cyber forensics, students learn how to accurately and legally access and analyze computers and cell phones, searching for evidence such as hidden and deleted files, email sent and received and web pages visited.” Students also do cutting edge research and present findings to their peers and leading professionals in their fields. This approach provides students with relevant experience — publishing and presenting at conferences, in some cases for government organizations such as the FBI.

For additional information regarding the Cyber Forensics and Security programs please visit www.itm.iit.edu/cybersecurity.

To help launch the program, Illinois Institute of Technology is hosted ForenSecure: the IIT Cyber Forensics and Security Conference on April 19 and 20. The conference had speakers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Chief Cyber Security Advisor from the Illinois Terrorism Task Force. For additional information about the conference please visit www.cpd.iit.edu/forensecure.

About IIT
Founded in 1890, IIT is a Ph.D.-granting university with more than 7,700 students in engineering, sciences, architecture, psychology, design, humanities, business and law. IIT’s interprofessional, technology-focused curriculum is designed to advance knowledge through research and scholarship, to cultivate invention improving the human condition, and to prepare students from throughout the world for a life of professional achievement, service to society, and individual fulfillment. Visit www.iit.edu.

Critiquing Your Rewritten Resume
Tues, Feb 7 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm @ Perlstein 131

Resume Review – Have your resume reviewed by IIT staff
Fri, Feb 10 from 10:00-2:00 @ Perlstin 131

IIT Career Fair
Thur, Feb 23 from 11:00-4:00 @ Herman Hall

Questions? Contact Madeleine England at mengland@iit.edu

Robert Half Technology has published their 2012 IT Salary Guide (worth grabbing a copy of!). They identify the following hot IT skills based on a survey of more than 1,600 CIOs in the United States and Canada:

5 TECH PROFESSIONALS FIRMS WANT NOW

• Systems and networking engineers: Skills – Cloud computing, Software as a Service, Virtualization
• Developers: Skills – .NET, Java, PHP, Silverlight, Flex, MySQL and portal technologies such as SharePoint
• Quality assurance professionals and business analysts
• Data warehousing and business intelligence professionals
• Security professionals

TOP TECHNICAL SKILLS IN DEMAND (after the break…) Read more…

According to a recent Computerworld survey, the top IT job skills employers will be seeking in 2012 in order of demand are:
1. Programming and Application Development (Especially Web development & Mobile application development)
2. Project Management (Especially those who also have skills as Business Analysts)
3. Help Desk/Technical Support (Especially those who can support mobile devices)
4. Networking (Need fueled in large part by virtualization and cloud computing projects)
5. Business Intelligence (Many need SharePoint developers)
6. Data Center (IT professionals with backgrounds in data center operations and systems integration, and experts in disaster recovery and business continuity)
7. Web 2.0 (HTML5, .Net, AJAX and PHP)
8. Security (Strong technical security and auditing skills)
9. Telecommunications (IP telephony skills)
Read more…

ITM Industry Associate Professor Valerie Scarlata received the Chicago Career Tech (CCT) Outstanding Instructor award at a ceremony on Friday, October 28 in the IIT Tower. The award, which did not exist before Val’s previous and current students lobbied for its addition to the CCT honors, was given for her outstanding teaching efforts and willingness to help outside the classroom with resume reviews and interview tips. Read more about CCT at IIT Today…