To properly prioritize sought-after competencies and prepare your workforce for the coming challenges and opportunities, a data-driven approach is needed.  

According to the third annual Coursera’s Job Skills Report, which stands as a valuable reference for developing innovative skill strategies, there are 8 key fastest-growing skills for 2024: 

• Leading Teams with Empathy  
• AI-Related Skills for Increased Productivity  
• Cybersecurity and Information Security  
• Business Skills & Digital Marketing as Core 
• Data Visualization for Faster Decision-Making  
• Cloud Computing  
• Audit and Compliance Skills  
• Customer Retention 

Top Job Skills Driving Innovation in 2024: Overview 

Here’s a quick summary of the fastest-growing job skills in business, technology, AI, data science, and cybersecurity for 2024: 

Fastest-Growing AI Skills  

Estimates at Bloomberg Intelligence show the market for AI solutions is set to grow to $1.3 trillion over the next decade, while job listing site Upwork reported a 1000% increase in the number of generative AI job posts made in the first half of 2023.  

Not surprised? So are we. Explore below the fastest-growing AI skills enabling learners to build ML models, facilitate automation, and more.  

Cloud Computing  

Gartner expects the global cloud computing market to have skyrocketed from $490.3 billion in 2022 to $591.8 billion in 2023.  

It presents an exciting opportunity for businesses and job seekers, with cloud computing jobs being some of the most in-demand roles in the tech industry.  

Cybersecurity  

With the critical need to protect against growing numbers of cyberattacks worldwide and the increasing capabilities of AI creating new security considerations, investment in cybersecurity skills will benefit employees and institutions alike in the year ahead.  

There’s an estimated shortfall of more than 3.4 million cybersecurity workers. That figure is likely to climb, with employment of information security analysts expected to grow 32% from 2022 to 2032 in the United States alone. 

Audit and Compliance Challenged by AI Regulations 

Only 37% of HR leaders, in-house counsel, and executives guide employees in using AI tools.   

Meanwhile, data privacy and security rank as the top concerns of Chief Intelligence Officers regarding AI.  

With generative AI transforming productivity, it will be crucial to develop the capability of employees to review and evaluate an organization’s compliance.  

Customer Success 

Customer success and relationship management skills are among the top ten fastest-growing business skills.   

According to McKinsey, unlocking new revenues from existing customers accounts for 80% of value creation in leading growth companies.  

So, there is a burning need for businesses to navigate customer retention and expand the value delivered to both current and potential customers. 

Leadership   

“Manager effectiveness” is ranked as the top priority for HR leaders—and employees are facing change fatigue, with willingness to support organizational change collapsing from 74% in 2016 to 43% in 2022.  

To effect change, the leaders of tomorrow will need to be agile, compassionate, and able to keep individuals and businesses aligned.  

Data-Literacy as a Baseline Expectation for Employers  

Today, only 11% of employees are confident in their ability to read, analyze, work with, and communicate with data—showcasing the vast need for upskilling and learning.  

Institutional leaders recognize the need to respond, with 85% of C-suite executives believing that being data-literate will be as vital in the future as the ability to use a computer is today.  

So, data visualization with the help of business intelligence software also joined the top of the fastest-growing skills.  

Digital Marketing   

The rapid growth of the global advertising and marketing industry, which is expected to rise to $1.5 trillion in 2030, illustrates the spurred demand for digital marketing skills. In the US alone, employment in digital marketing-related professions is projected to grow rapidly up to 2032.  

Meanwhile, shifting consumer behaviors—powering trends like increased social selling—with 76% of people making buying decisions on social media—call for upgraded skills from digital marketers.  

To adapt to a new paradigm, organizations should invest now in equipping learners with the skill sets to deliver modern marketing strategies. 

Your Workforce Check  

By addressing these questions, you may check if your organization has the right skills.  

Strategic Alignment:  

• Which job skills are most critical for achieving your business goals and strategic initiatives?  
• How do these skills differ across departments and levels within the organization?  
• Are there any skills gaps that could hinder our progress, and how can we address them?  

Talent Acquisition & Retention:  

• How can we attract and retain top talent who possess these critical skills?  
• What are our competitors doing regarding these skills, and how can we compete effectively?  
• How can we develop and upskill our workforce to meet these changing demands?  

Future-Proofing the Organization:  

• What emerging technologies and trends might impact the skillset we need in the future?  
• How can we invest in skills that will remain relevant and valuable in the long term?  
• What kind of culture and learning environment do we need to foster continuous skill development? 

How to Find and Hire Sought-After Specialists with Digital Mindsets in 2024 

While a business-driven digital mindset is critical for increasing competitive advantage, leaders need well-established best practices to find and onboard it or unlock it in current employees.  

Wherever you are on your digital journey, we’re ready to help. Our experts can support you with extracting your potential to transform, innovate, and grow by:    

• Delivering digital mindset—the only one that can help with innovation: technical expertise ensures your digital programs and processes are up to date and as efficient as can be.  
• Integrating top talents with your current team through the Remote In-Sourcing® model.  
• Forming the most efficient distributed teams through the just-right Team Formation methodology. 

With a digital mindset, you’ll ask the right questions, make smart decisions, and appreciate new possibilities for a digital future. Leaders who adopt advanced approaches will be able to develop their organization’s talent and prepare their company for successful and continued digital transformation. 

Feel free to connect with our experts to discuss your unique needs and what it really takes for your business to thrive in the age of data, algorithms, and AI.  

Summing Up  

All in all, companies looking to boost competitiveness in 2024 have a wealth of opportunities:  

• Make data-driven decisions while identifying priority skills.  
• Invest in upskilling and reskilling of your workforce. 
• Embrace automation and AI with qualified audit, cybersecurity, management, and marketing professionals on board. 
• Rely on a trusted technology partner to help you source and acquire sought-after specialists with Digital Mindsets. 

The post Futureproof Your Organization with Digital Minds: Top Job Skills Driving Innovation in 2024 appeared first on Intetics.

“Did you know that Agriculture, one of the most conservative sectors, could soon be digitalized and transformed? Smart and precision farming is not the future anymore – it’s today’s reality.”

The Global Suppliers Association (GSA) hosted a SourcingTech event on September 15th. Maksim Evsukov, Head of GeoSoftware and AI Solutions at Intetics’s Global Vision and Innovations, presented insights on IoT and ML application in Agriculture.

Let’s dive into the event and see the key features which were announced on the day.

Issues farmers face, such as a lack of HR resources and expertise, a lack of data collection for crop and weed analysis, a lack of time to spray plant protection products, and more, can now be solved with IoT solutions.

The software solution collects data from ground sensors that are physically installed in the fields.  They automatically analyze the field using 16 different parameters and provide analytics to ensure efficient crop planning.

Drones can be used to get a complete picture of what is happening in fields.

Now a farmer can see his entire field from a bird’s eye view.

• 30% Increase in yield
• Decreased treatment costs
• May work when the soil is too wet and even at night
• Automated processes
• Detect pests and diseases
• Crop predictions
• Precise crop spraying with plant protection products
• Easy data access at any time and on any device

Just consider the real-world economic benefits of this technology!

Let’s take a look at the numbers:

Authoritative marketing research agencies assume the global market for precision agricultural solutions will reach 3.7 billion by 2025.

By implementing IoT and ML applications, farmers and agricultural companies can reduce:Time spent for analysis and decision making up to 280% 

• Transportation costs up to 40% 
• Usage of fertilizers, pesticides, and consumables by up  to 42% 
• Human effort up to 50% 
• Crop losses through disease and adverse weather  by up to 23% 
• Disease detection and elimination time by up to 74% 

And at the same time, clients in the agricultural sector can increase:

• Cost savings by up to 41% 
• Crop yield by up to 31% 
• Crop prediction by up to 58% 
• Crop quality by up to 16%

All of the benefits mentioned above are considered elements of smart farming. This refers to the whole process, from data collection, building crop analytics systems, to offering the right decisions on which crop to plant, when, and where. Also, data assist in deciding which field to work in to gain the highest and most qualitative yield with the lowest costs.

Are you working on a UAV hardware project?

Are you a progressive agricultural company or a traditional contractor who wants to progress to the next level of doing business?

We can provide you with a boost by delivering the best IoT software solution for your requirements.

To get more details, study the presentation in more depth or contact us.

Synergy begins with Intetics!

The post Is IoT on Your Radar? The Application of IoT and ML in Agriculture. appeared first on Intetics.

Modern software development involves the increased use of open source code as an essential part of product-tailoring projects. The Linux Foundation survey on corporate open source programs says that 72% of organizations make non-commercial use of open source code and 55% use it for commercial product development. Large open source communities worldwide contribute to the development and support of open source components, which increases code quality and expedites bug-fixing processes.

Developers can access open source resources for free or partly free, but it doesn’t mean they may borrow and employ code any way they like. They can use open source code on attractive terms and gain the advantage of speed, quality and reduced costs. Enterprise code versions can also offer extended features to harness. However, there are conditions of use that engineers have to meet.

It’s crucial to make sure that every component is well scrutinized before it’s integrated into your project. Unlicensed or outdated open source code or libraries of unknown origin might conceal vulnerabilities, such as licensing, maintenance and security issues accompanied by legal and financial risks.

We have outlined three key bottlenecks related to the use of open source code that you and your team might wish to avoid in your product development project. Read on and learn how to prevent future or fix current flaws.

Problem 1: Violation of license agreement for commercial uses

Using unlicensed open source сode is unsafe. You might end up violating intellectual property rights or bringing security vulnerabilities and risks into your project, which can translate into financial and legal consequences. Despite that, most developers strive to release faster or cut costs so much that they don’t stop to think about the origin of the components they are going to use.

Now, how does licensing work? A code license allows developers to use, copy, modify, and share the component in a certain way, while unlicensed parts make those aspects unclear. There are 20 common licenses, such as Apache License 2.0, MIT License, GNU General Public License (GPL), and others.

Still, 33% of codebases contain unlicensed open source components. So if you bump into an unlicensed component, be extremely careful. Adopting unlicensed components entails great risks of copyright violations.

Tip: Watch out for hidden inconsistencies

You must be wondering how to stay on the safe side. Firstly, document the use of all third-party resources on the project. Although it requires time and resources, you get to know where all your open source elements come from. Secondly, import libraries only after getting approval from the project tech lead.

Problem 2: Use of libraries without community support

Another aspect you might stumble over is using open source libraries that a developer community doesn’t support. These libraries might often fail to comply with security standards, work incorrectly with other open source components, be out-of-date or have no license at all. Furthermore, developers of open source components may create custom licenses or distribute their code without any information. Unaware of such specifics, your team might neglect the licensing terms, and, in the end, your organization will bear all legal responsibilities.

Black Duck Audits says that out of all audited codebases, 31% of open source components have custom licenses, and their usage might result in license conflict. Business and legal risks are likely aftermaths that your development team may wish to dodge by comprehensively analyzing open source code and its origin.

Open source code that is supported by community usually comes with regular updates as its creators take responsibility to ensure security compliance and compatibility with new language versions. They focus on constant and timely delivery of all necessary support, thus reducing the risk of product developers using outdated code. Moreover, community is usually quick to detect bugs and fix them. All this dramatically increases the trustability of open source libraries that enjoy community support.

Tip: Check the origin of the libraries you use

If your project requires an open source library, start with scrutinizing the component you need: сheck its license, source and version before you use it. Otherwise, your engineering team may neglect the license policy, which is likely to ruin the final product and result in legal action from copyright holders. Also, try to only use libraries from official sites, and if possible, do not import code manually. Do it with the help of builders instead.

There is another way that might work for you: opt for the help of a professional provider of software evaluation services. You’ll have a highly qualified team at your service, sharing their vast experience of product quality assessment, and doing research instead of your engineers.

Problem 3: Use of outdated open source components causing vulnerability risks

A huge number of product development projects (91%, to be precise) use outdated open source components, thus jeopardizing project security significantly. According to Synopsys, 82% of codebases have four-year-old parts and 88% have had no add-ons during the last two years.

Providers of open source code sooner or later withdraw support of earlier versions and stop delivering new patches. If your organization is using legacy software, this may result in security breaches. Your business-critical files or customer data may be stolen or become publicly available as it happened to the American credit ranking giant Equifax.

They used an open source server framework that had security vulnerability already detected by the solution provider. The latter had released the patch to fix the issue, but the credit ranking company continued using the outdated version. This company suffered a hacker attack through the vulnerable open source code, and 143 million sensitive customer records leaked into the public domain.

Tip: Track the software versions you use

To avoid security risks, failures and corruption of data-related processes, you need to be sure that the software you use is brand new and receives vendor support and upgrades. In case you work with different frameworks, you need to check that all libraries work together correctly.

How can you do this? One method is to set regulations for your development team and make sure they use open source code carefully, and consistently record all resources and elements.

On the other hand, you may choose automated open source code assessment tools that help verify the relevance of code elements. A top-notch tool automatically tracks possible vulnerabilities in open source code and spots issues on time.

Final recommendations

When your development team works on a new product and uses open source code, it is vital to make sure that they use licensed and up-to-date third-party components. This helps you mitigate legal, security and operational risks.

The following general steps can help you deal with major open source code issues:

• Inventory your open source components right now. Structured records can help you navigate through and monitor all the elements.
• Create policies for your development and legal teams to regulate every open source activity in the project.
• Keep on auditing your open source code regularly. It is the best way to detect and troubleshoot issues on time.
• Engage in open source communities. In this way, your engineers improve knowledge of the components they employ in the project.

If you are not confident about the product quality and wish to scrutinize your open source components, go for a large-scale software project assessment. We recommend the TETRA platform. It can help you uncover technical debt and get an in-depth analysis of code quality, as well as useful ideas for solving your burning issues.

Image source: Freepik.com

The post Open Source Code In Product Development: Best Practices And Risk Mitigation appeared first on Intetics.

IoT is its essential part and is usually defined as the connection between wireless technologies, microcontrollers, services, and the Internet. It collects, transforms, and transmits real-time data from any device or machine – anywhere. This infographic gives a quick overview of IoT and helps to understand what it includes.

Image credit: Freepik.com

The post Infographic: A Brief Overview of IoT appeared first on Intetics.

More information about what is the Internet of things can be found here, but for now, let’s ask some questions that will help us make this new world a functional and attractive future.

1. What is the “killer app” for Internet of Things?

Killer applications are computer software programs that have become an indispensable part of some technology. It’s the one required app that makes some other technology work and that drives the sale of those technologies. Some examples in the past have included Apple’s VisiCalc spreadsheet software, or e-mail (arguably needing to use e-mail drove purchases of computers).

What is the killer app for Internet of Things? For the large part, it is too soon to tell – will it be the medical applications connected to sick loved ones to make sure they are okay, or will it be the ability to analyze each product and predict what parts are most likely to break and cause electricity shortages? The Internet of Things is still in its infancy and the possibilities are boundless. The major trend of any “killer app” is likely to be something that gives us access to more knowledge – whether it is knowledge of medical conditions or predicting product longevity.

2. How secure is the data collected? Who owns it?

The real benefit of the Internet of Things will be realized by collection and analysis of data. A light bulb will be able to report its condition and a medical implant will be able to monitor and send medical data to your doctor. Where is all of this data going to be and who owns it?

The answer is still in the making. Most companies do not want to own the data, rather they simply want to have access to it (after all owning assumes more responsibility). Currently, the security of data is questionable, with recent data security breaches that are becoming more and more common.

3. What about access? Will others be able to access data without owning it?

Can start-ups and non-profits access existing data? Will they have to pay to the owners of the data?

This is an interesting question that again goes back to ownership. Companies that collect data may be more reluctant to share it with others – not least of all for security reasons (is that even legal?).

The ownership of data is still something that litigators and companies are going to have to figure out as Internet of Things gives us access to more (often private) information.

4. Is IoT going to lead to too much data? What will happen to intentionally building applications with a specific end result in mind?

The idea behind Internet of Things is that with cheaper devices, cheap connectivity and cheaper storage prices, it will become easier to collect as much data as possible in order to mine it 5, 10, or 20 years after. On the other hand, in the past (and still today), companies, data analysts and software developers have to put considerable thought into their application and software designs.

Will the ability to have any data change the way applications are built? Will the design process stop concentrating on exactly targeting one piece of information in favor of planning and collecting all possible information? Will that lead us into an age of too much data, where we have a lot of potential information stored in massive amounts of undiscernible data?

Maybe.

Most likely, however, application development will split into two main camps: there will be applications that require real-time data, and therefore will have more specific design and data requirements. The other camp will include companies that are analyzing their customer behavior or products in the long run. These companies will rely on huge amounts of data that will be analyzed after it has been collected to find useful correlations.

5. What is the best way to innovate and make the internet of things a reality?

Innovate around commercial models, listen to the customer, and concentrate on your key strengths. Rapid adaptation by consumers is key, and if part of your plan to create new products is out of your core specialty, it might make sense to partner with someone who already has that expertise in order to deliver the best product. Distributed teams will become more common as companies try to create devices that combine elements of software, data analysis and functional design.

Find something new, be intelligent in your product and operations design and you are more likely to end up with an advantageous product.

Oh, and never give up.

The post 5 questions to ask about the Internet of Things appeared first on Intetics.