According to Oxbridge Academy, IT related skills are the most sought after in South Africa. The skill shortage in SA is believed to not be due to a lack of educated IT professionals, but a lack of experienced IT professionals who don’t have a broad enough skillset to manage every aspect of a company’s IT environment. Peter Searle (BBD CEO) and Ralf Dominick (BBD Chairperson) in their article, SA’s shortage of software skills needs urgent attention, are of the opinion that the government needs to adopt a flexible education strategy to upskill IT professionals. This would include tech companies sharing best practices and innovative ideas with IT professionals.

Barry Kemp, Head of Managed IT at Vox comments how the shortage has made experienced IT professionals with a broad skillset invaluable. “Skilled IT professionals in SA are incredibly valuable, they get head hunted and often leave the country as a result,” says Kemp.

The lack of experienced IT professionals with a vast knowledge of the IT field has created a dilemma for companies in SA who are embracing new technology. One area where this impact can be seen is in securing a company’s IT infrastructure. “SA companies are highly vulnerable when it comes to IT security, especially since it’s the field of IT with the least number of skilled professionals. It’s no wonder SA is the third most hit country for cyber-attacks,” says Kemp.

 

What’s the solution?

While companies can hire an inhouse IT professional with a breadth of IT knowledge, this will be both hard to find and expensive. Hiring several different IT professionals who specialise in different IT fields is another option, but this will be difficult to manage and won’t be cost effective.

A third option is to hire a company that has a team of skilled IT professionals who together share a wide range of IT knowledge and can manage your whole IT environment for you. This will be both cost effective and easy to manage.

Vox found the third solution to be the most valuable to customers and created managed IT, a service that employs a host of IT engineers who together share the knowledge needed to run any company’s IT environment.

 

The skillset of a managed IT service:

 

  • Managed Desktops – This includes patching Windows updates, actively monitoring and maintaining company computers, clearing temporary files and making sure machines don’t run out of space.
  • Managed Servers – This includes day to day management and monitoring of the servers as well as ensuring that server updates are installed so that hackers will find no vulnerabilities in a company’s server.
  • Managed Backup – This includes managing a company’s data backups and ensuring critical and sensitive information is protected from loss.
  • Managed Email – This includes managing email configuration, security and email archiving.
  • Managed Cloud – This includes managing cloud security and managing the cost of cloud platforms which are usually pay per use – clients don’t realise what they are paying for unless their cloud platforms are managed by a managed services provider such as Vox Managed IT.
  • Cloud Migrations – This includes moving data and applications from an on-premise server to the cloud or from one cloud platform to another cloud platform.
  • Managed Security – This includes antivirus and firewall management, as well as monitoring security reporting analytics.
  • Managed Network – This includes cabling and switches and looking after the inside of a company’s network.

 

Vox employs a broad set of IT engineers who together have a breadth of knowledge to best manage any company’s IT environment – big or small. Visit https://www.vox.co.za/managed-it-2/ to find more about their Managed IT services.