Cisco will invest in the development of 400,000 networking professionals over the next five years, to help address the IT skills shortage in Asia Pacific.
Cisco made this commitment at the launch of the Internet of Everything webinar series, designed to inspire the next generation of IT talent to pursue careers in the industry.
An IDC study commissioned by the vendor states that by 2016 there will be a skills gap of over 400,000 networking professionals across the region, which will represent a segment of the two million unfilled ICT-related jobs globally within ten years. Without investment in skills, technology progress will not translate into productivity growth, and Asia Pacific will not be able to compete in an increasingly knowledge-based global economy.
Over the next 10 months, the webinar series, which is available to all Networking Academy students, will cover various aspects of the Internet of Everything and the career opportunities it offers. The series will be a combination of both in-person and virtual utilizing Cisco's collaboration technologies such as Cisco TelePresence, Cisco WebEx and Cisco TV.
Cisco said knowledge-based jobs will become more pervasive in an Internet of Everything-driven world. As the Internet of Everything drives the transformation alongside next-generation and tech-savvy workers, job creation techniques will evolve.
To support talent enablement in key areas and reduce this growing skills gap, Learning@Cisco, along with its partners, will deliver a new portfolio, consisting of IoT curricula, assessments and an upcoming Cisco Specialist Certification to advance skills development in industrial networking.