How to master the Web 2.0 arts

Few would dispute the assertion that internet-based collaboration has transformed the way many people, particularly the younger generation, interact with their peers.

But while business interest in collaborative technologies such as IP-based unified communications (UC) and videoconferencing is firmly established, many IT managers are still wondering how to harness the productivity-boosting power of Web 2.0 tools such as instant messaging (IM), social networking sites, wikis, blogs, podcasts, RSS, mashups and widgets.

Demand for such innovation seems assured. Analyst Forrester Research suggests that global enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technology will top $4.6bn (£2.3bn) by 2013, up from about $764m (£387m) in 2008.

But before they can expand their use of collaborative technology, businesses will have to attract the relevant skills to enhance their existing web applications and develop new ones ­ – skills that are not necessarily readily available or formally defined.

Figures from online vacancy tracker ITJobsWatch indicate that Web 2.0 skills are much in demand, with average salaries rising by 5.4 per cent in the three months ending 30 July 2008 compared to a year earlier, with the number of listed vacancies more than doubling. Demand does not necessarily reflect supply, however, and there is evidence to suggest there are simply not enough people with the relevant skills to fill the vacancies.

“I think that most companies lack the skills to add internet collaboration tools to their environments, particularly those that have traditionally focused on back-end processing rather than front-end applications,” says Kishore Swaminathan, chief scientist at global consulting giant Accenture.

“They are beginning to hire younger people who have the skills, but they still need the corporate blessing to do something with them. In the short term they usually hire some geeks from a company that has three people to help develop the applications.”

A survey of 100 network and application professionals conducted earlier this year by Psytechnics, a company specialising in voice and video readiness assessments, found 60 per cent of UC experts did not believe there were enough skilled technical staff to deal with the expected demand in UC deployments.

Of the people Psytechnics questioned, 74 per cent said UC requires an IT operations workforce that is knowledgeable in both networks and voice and video applications, rather than one or the other. An individual with such combined skills is a rare breed, and that cuts the available pool of labour further and means additional training for potential candidates is more likely to be needed.

While training on UC and videoconferencing platforms is tied closely to specific vendor software, and usually delivered in tandem with system implementation, instruction in how to use and get the best from Web 2.0 technologies is offered by a small but growing number of specialised IT training organisations and academic institutions.

Steve Boneham is consultant trainer for Netskills, a training and staff development service based at the University of Newcastle and focused primarily on the academic community.

“We have seen renewed interest in all things internet as a result of Web 2.0 technologies, but the kind of training people are asking for is less about understanding the issues and applications involved, and more about effective communication and why and what is effective, rather than how to do it,” he says.

Boneham has seen a lot of interest in podcasting, which perhaps reflects the fact that Netskills deals primarily with members of the academic community who are always looking for new ways of disseminating information to their students.

“It is a new course area, so was always going to be a bit more popular, but we have noticed a lot of demand for podcasting ­ – which is surprising because it is almost an old technology for Web 2.0, though people ask for videocasting as well,” he says.

Accenture’s Swaminathan, meanwhile, says the quantity and breadth of Web 2.0 training available to IT professionals has to improve if companies are to successfully implement collaborative projects based on new technologies.

“I have not seen much training available at all, and I think that is curious,” he says. “In Accenture itself, we have had both success and failure stories, in the large-scale use of wikis for example. If you look at both outcomes and ask what is the differentiating factor between the two, it is employees having a reasonable level of training and knowledge of what the company expects to get out of the application on a day-to-day basis. In any large group, there are always people who are self-taught.”

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