Intelligent CIO Europe Issue 52 | Page 20

NEWS

Skills shortages remain the top barrier to Industrial IoT adoption

Research by Inmarsat , a leader in global , mobile satellite communications , has revealed that skills shortages are putting a brake on IoT innovation , inhibiting the adoption of the technology and the effectiveness of IoT deployments across businesses .

These findings underline how little progress has been made in addressing skills shortages since the company ’ s 2018 report , which pinpointed that the skills gap was the top barrier to successful IoT deployments . This remains the case with organisations needing to do more to upskill , bring in new talent or work with outsourcers with the requisite skills .
According to the research , based on interviews with 450 global respondents across the agriculture , electrical utilities , mining , oil and gas , transport and logistics sectors , organisations don ’ t always have the skills they need to fully utilise their IoT projects . A lack of in-house skills remains the top barrier to IoT deployment for well over a third ( 37 %) of all respondents in the study .
In terms of the specific skill sets businesses need , half ( 50 %) of all respondents stated that they lacked cybersecurity talent , closely followed by a need for additional staff with experience and skills in data science and analytics ( 49 %), technical support ( 48 %) and connectivity technology ( 47 %).

Glide connects Proximity Edge 8 data centre to Birmingham dark fibre ring

Glide , a market leader in ultra-fast broadband connectivity and deploying fibre infrastructure , has announced that it has connected its rapidly expanding dark fibre infrastructure with Proximity Data Centres ’ newly acquired Birmingham Edge colocation data centre .

Proximity is one of the UK ’ s fastest-growing regional Edge colocation data centre providers . The new dark fibre network directly connects Proximity ’ s growing base of enterprise business , cloud provider and content delivery customers to Glide ’ s 30km fibre ring spanning Birmingham , enabling access to a growing range of diverse low latency dark fibre connectivity solutions .
Glide ’ s dark fibre infrastructure connection will enable Proximity Birmingham ( Edge 8 ) to ensure thousands of businesses across the West Midlands have reliable access to low latency , highly responsive applications and services .
Glide ’ s dark fibre connection also provides Proximity with an additional network route into the Proximity Birmingham ( Edge 8 ) Edge data centre . This allows leading national and regional carriers and service providers to leverage the network to offer their own dark fibre and managed ‘ lit ’ connectivity solutions across the region to their customers .
“ The availability of diverse dark fibre connectivity is vital to ensuring that Edge colocation customers ’ data and applications are always seamlessly and securely available to the users that require them ,” said John Hall , Managing Director – Colocation , Proximity Data Centres . p
20 INTELLIGENTCIO EUROPE www . intelligentcio . com