Channel warns of skills surplus

Influx of reseller techies could be 'sitting on the bench' while customers get up to speed on new technology

The IT skills gap could be a thing of the past in the coming few years, with resellers facing the opposite problem of having too many well-trained techies to meet customer demands.

That is according to some resellers which claim that advances in consumer technology will mean today's schoolchildren will more tech-savvy than ever, meaning job competition in the channel could be fierce.

The IT skills gap is something channel firms have lamented for many years - last summer Microsoft said that the lack of appropriately trained staff is stifling the cloud industry and just last week, Cisco claimed there is a "tremendous shortfall" in staff training on Internet of Things (IoT) kit.

Logicalis' UK chief technology officer Chris Gabriel admitted this is a problem today, but said it will be far from the case in the future.

"I think we are struggling now but in the next three to five years that gap is going to disappear really, really quickly," he told CRN. "I have a seven-year-old and an 11-year-old and I can guarantee by the time my daughter is 14, in school, she will be using some sort of cloud-based analytics application in the classroom to work out the demographics of frogs in Patagonia, for example. They are going to be naturals to go into [IoT]."

But this may not be ideal for the channel, he added. "It sounds daft, but we may end up with too many [skilled staff]" he said.

Softcat's managing director Colin Brown agreed and said panic-training tech staff to keep up with trends could be troublesome for the channel.

"I agree that there are not enough people trained up [in IoT tech] but I think there are enough people who would like to be," he told CRN. "I think it will fix itself; people will go where the opportunity is.

"Another thing I would say on that is - and it is a bit 'chicken or egg' - there are not so many customers doing big things with IoT yet - they are talking about it but not doing it. The last thing service providers want is to have a load of people trained up but not being used. Sitting on the bench waiting for the call - that is expensive!"