As part of efforts to provide more receptacles for "expert" level skills training, Singapore's Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) has announced two Centers of Attachment (COA) in partnership with EMC and Microsoft respectively.
The EMC Centre will provide expert level training for job roles which includes cloud architect and data scientist, while the Microsoft Centre will provide on-the-job training opportunities in areas such as SaaS design and business intelligence.
"We are seeing these growth opportunities in various technology and use areas, but what do we need to do to take advantage of them?" Tay said. "We need infocomm professionals who have the relevant skills to realise those opportunities. IDA's Infocomm Manpower Development Roadmap Version 2.0 or MDEV 2.0 therefore seeks to support our professionals, at three levels -- fresh graduates, in-service professionals and experts in their respective fields."
For the more senior infocomm professionals, IDA's focus is two-pronged -- help professionals acquire skills in emerging and growth areas and train professionals on domain-specific technologies. Under the Infocomm Leadership and Development Programme Expanded (iLEAD Expanded), IDA will partner key industry players to grow and develop infocomm leaders in niche technology areas. Collectively, IDA targets to train over 100 infocomm experts within the next two years under iLEAD Expanded.
iLEAD Expanded covers the COA initiative. The centers could be technology labs by the industry or academia, and they provide experiential training through short-term project work and mentorship. Singapore's infocomm industry posted an 18.5% year-on-year increase in revenue in 2011 to reach $67 billion (S$83 billion).
"This represents our strongest growth in five years," said Ronnie Tay, CEO of the IDA at a recent infocomm professionals development forum. "According to our latest Annual Survey on Infocomm Manpower 2011, there was a 1.1% increase in employment, with infocomm workforce reaching almost 143,000."
Cloud computing is cited as a growth area by CIOs with enterprise spending on public cloud services expected to grow by some 20% to reach $109 billion worldwide this year. Gartner estimates that enterprise public cloud services spending will reach $207 billion by 2016, more than double the spent in less than five years time, while the Singapore Cloud Adoption Study commissioned by IDA ranks Singapore third, after Australia and Japan, in terms of cloud adoption in Asia Pacific.