10 Future Job Roles & the Importance of Cloud Competency & Certification

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With the increasing trend of deployment and implementation on cloud and continuous product releases across the SAAS/PAAS/IAAS solutions, it is imperative to know what kind of career transformation could happen in the future.

It's crucial to examine how today's professionals can build skills and earn certifications to prepare for future roles.

Below, we'll explore some of the roles and competencies where skills gaps could provide huge job opportunities for professionals.

By following a learning path and earning in demand cloud certifications, you could be well on your way to a promising career.

1. Cloud Strategic Database Administrator

From the traditional DBA professional, the future role of the DBA will be more geared toward strategically managing database on cloud. The DBA should be equipped with in-depth experience building DBAAS solutions and managing co-existence solutions. The DBA should also develop skills in niche database areas, including multitenancy, performance tuning, high availability and security tuned towards cloud.

Oracle Database 12c provides a plethora of features /functionalities designed for cloud. And with DBAAS, it can be extended on how you could manage it. It's key for professionals to build knowledge and experience in this niche area of database cloud to keep pace with future deployment environments.

Related Technology: Database 12c, DBAAS

2. Professional DevOps Engineer

Within the large ecosystem of Java developers, the next generation development platform is readily available on cloud. It's imperative for development teams to align with next generation developer roles that could require more agile, collaborative and build-on-the-fly skills in the cloud environment.

DevOps will experience a key paradigm shift in development. It requires a change in thinking from traditional development, which could create huge skills gaps.

Related Technology: Java, chef, Java Cloud Service, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c

3. Data Scientist

For all database professionals managing Business Intelligence applications, data science is one of the key areas to build knowledge. Data science involves applying statistical methodologies to identify patterns in the data world. Oracle’s Big Data and Analytics platform for data scientists is a great place to start.

Related Technology: Oracle Big Data Cloud Service (BDCS), Oracle R Advanced Analytics for Hadoop (ORAAH), Big Data Discovery (BDD), Oracle Big Data Spatial and Graph (BDSG), Oracle Advanced Analytics (OAA), Oracle Big Data SQL, Oracle Data Visualization (DV), and Oracle Big Data Cloud Service - Compute Edition (BDCS-CE).

4. Java Embedded Development – IOT Specialist

One of the key developments in modern times is related to extensibility of devices to communicate data with other devices, while building solutions to connect, stream and build analytics over the data.

Given that Raspberry and Arduino have become defacto standards for embedding intelligence into devices, there will be a high demand for professionals with embedded Java skills. These skills will be used to integrate and build industry-specific applications for the future.

Related Technology: Java Embedded, IOTCS, ICS, SOACS, Mobile CS, Device programming (Raspberry)

5. Modern SAAS Application Technology Professionals

Given most of the ERP, CRM and CX solutions are moving from on-premise to Cloud, there will be a huge skills gap when it comes to seamlessly integrating these solutions. There will be a need to develop modern portal leveraging and PAAS solutions integration.

As large number of professional roles will open up in these areas, building Java skills, followed by PAAS platform for integration skills, is essential for the future.

Related Technology: Java CS, SOA CS, ICS, API Management, Entire PAAS Stack

6. Mobile Enabling On Demand and SAAS extensions – Mobile Experts

Mobile is omnipresent. Professionals who can automate business processes seamlessly into Android and iPhone platforms, while developing strategy for integration and architectural solutions, will be in high demand.

Building mobility architectural skills, improving user experience integrating with AR and wearable connectivity are all areas developers should focus on.

Related Technology: Java, MAF, PAAS Platform, Mobile Cloud Service

7. Security Management - Security Specialist

With global digitalization and devices becoming connected, a huge amount of data is generated. It has become essential to build niche security skills related to every layer of transactions, including database, applications, mobile and cloud.

Encryption and authentication expertise, as well as the ability to write modern algorithms to control device security and application security, will be in huge demand. Professionals who can manage these devices and systems will also be highly sought after in the workplace.

Related Oracle Technology: Database 12c, EM 12c, Identity management, IDM as service

8. Analytics Professionals – Big Data – Predictive/Prescriptive/AI/Emotional Analyst

As the world is all about data and analytics, building and managing these platforms and ensuring only relevant data sources are accessed will become increasingly important. Data sources include social media, applications, IOT and mobile.

This requires multi-disciplinary skills that professionals need to build, including Hadoop, map reduce, database, data warehouse and streaming technologies such as CEP for pulling the data.

Related Oracle Technology: Database 12c, Big Data, CEP, Java, Oracle R Advanced Analytics, Big Data Appliance.

9. Infrastructure Specialist and Engineered System Specialist

Given the huge growth in SAAS and PAAS adoption, it's imperative for organizations to have experts who can properly manage the infrastructure and formulate strategy surrounding storage, security, scalability, availability and more.

It will become essential to have expert system specialists who have extensive experience working with engineered systems like Exadata as service and Exalogic.

Related Technology: Bare Metal, Ravello, Container, Compute, Storage, Network Professional, Exadata on cloud, Exalogic, Exalytics, Sun Sparc T5

10. AI, Robotics, IORT and Augmented Technologies Development

With innovative research and development around robotics, AR, Emotional Intelligence and Augmentation, there are a lot of new opportunities for developers who are skilled in machine learning, NLP, cognitive computing and robotic programming.

Related Technology: Java, Machine Learning, Bots, Application Enrichment with AI (Big Data Discovery, Data Cloud Service, HCM Apps)

Most of the roles discussed above require professionals to have very strong foundations in Database and Java.

The majority of innovations for the future are driven by products hosted on the cloud in various layers – SAAS, PAAS or IAAS. It's imperative for the professionals to develop cloud competency and earn certifications to increase their market value.

It is also becoming essential to power the end user with modern learning, such as In-APP just in time learning, which helps end users quickly master processes as they navigate the software.

Competency development falls into four categories:

• Foundations - Database 12c, Java, Cloud Development/Platform/Infrastructure
• Building niche skills for the digital world – social, mobile, analytics, IOT
• Extending the platform and reengineering infrastructure skills for the Cloud extending SAAS applications – PAAS and IAAS platforms
• Future platform – robotics, AI, natural language, emotional intelligence API

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About the Author:

Sudhir Menon is a seasoned and experienced techno-management professional with 22+ years of diverse experience across consulting, industry solutions, architecture, and technology management. He is very passionate about architecture and has diverse experience managing customers and building solutions specific to industry mapping to the business needs.

He has strong consulting experience in building IOT, Analytics, Cloud and Middleware Solutions for large customers. He is currently doing research around IOT and Analytics and building next generation solutions. He works as principal consultant at Oracle University.

You can reach him @sudhir.g.menon@oracle.com.