Transformation Transcends IT: EMC Intros New Courses to Fill Business Leaders’ Skills Gap

A skills gap exists among business leaders—specifically, in cloud and IT as a Service (ITaaS), and data science and Big Data analytics. Today, I’m happy to announce that EMC is helping to fill this skills gap through new courses that will give business leaders the knowledge and tools needed to successfully implement cloud or Big Data analytics strategies within their organizations:

Cloud and ITaaS for Business Transformation Courses

  • One-day course and 90+ minute Executive Module
  • Provides definitions, concepts, skills and strategies to leverage cloud and ITaaS for agility and efficiency within an organization
  • Addresses governance, finance, organization, and technology to be more competitive, innovative and efficient

Data Science and Big Data Analytics for Business Transformation Courses

  • One-day course and 90+ minute Executive Module
  • Provides the skills and knowledge to implement a Big Data strategy and lead an analytics team to success
  • Unlocks the power of Big Data to drive incremental business value

Implementing transformational IT strategies, such as cloud and ITaaS, or data science and Big Data analytics, isn’t just about the technology. At EMC, we say “transformation transcends IT,” because transformation requires new business models, new roles, new skills, new organizational alignment, and most importantly, a new mindset. To help move organizations forward with their transformation, EMC introduced industry standards-based education solutions for Cloud Architects in 2011 and for Data Scientists last year. The industry responded with, to date, 15,000+ professionals completing EMC’s cloud training, and 3,000+ completing EMC’s training for data science and Big Data analytics.

Many of the professionals who completed the cloud or data science courses told us that they really needed their management to better understand these transformational technologies.  In fact, in a February 2013 global survey1 EMC conducted of more than 1,000 IT professionals in more than 600 organizations, only 18% overall said that their management has strong skills in cloud and ITaaS.

Cloud skills surveys

And only 16% said their management had strong skills in data science and Big Data analytics.

Data science survey slide

For business transformation to be successful, everyone in the organization must be all in — it can’t just be about the technical team. These new courses will be incredibly valuable in helping organizations achieve their business transformation objectives.  Feedback from customers and analysts has been very strong.

John Baker, Director of Analytics at Affectiva, Inc. shares his thoughts about the Data Science for Business Transformation course, and Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group discusses the Business Leaders curriculum.

You can also watch me assess the new courses with Dave Vellante, Chief Analyst, Wikibon.

These new courses are available in a number of learning modes including video instructor-led training (ILT), which offers multimedia capture of an actual class and provides a near-classroom experience via DVD.

With these new courses, EMC now offers educational solutions for cloud and Big Data analytics across the entire organization. More information can be found here — we hope you’ll tap in to this important opportunity.

1 “Managing Information Storage: Trends, Challenges and Options-2013-2014” to be published on May 7, 2013

About the Author: Tom Clancy