In looking to hit 30% software control by year-end, AT&T set to increase education of workforce in NFV, SDN and IoT technologies
AT&T is looking to increase the pace in which it’s migrating software control over its network as well as bolstering the software-based skill set of its workforce.
In a recent blog post, John Donovan, chief strategy officer and group president for AT&T Technology and Operations, said the carrier is looking to push its network into software from 5.7% reached at the end of 2015, to 30% by the end of 2016. This push is set to continue onto its previously stated goal of hitting 75% control by 2020.
To meet this goal, Donovan said it was paramount for its employees to be more versed in terms of its software needs, including greater expertise in network functions virtualization, software-defined networking, security, data analytics and the “Internet of Things” all running in an open source software environment. In addition, the company needs its “nontechnical” employees to gain familiarity with software, as “our salespeople, lawyers, accountants, recruiters, marketing experts and more also need to understand where we’re going.”
Donovan explained AT&T was focused on internal workforce training to hit its goals, as well as attracting new talent versed in software.
“We know what we need,” Donovan said. “Rather than wholesale hiring of new talent from outside, we chose to place a bet on reskilling our people. Our human resource experts have outlined the plan. They’re continuing to drive our effort to help employees expand or learn skills for the future. Some of that training is internal at AT&T. But we knew we also needed some outside help.”
That help includes AT&T partnering with Georgia Tech, Udacity, the University of Oklahoma, Pace University, Champlain College and others, as well as providing “targeting tuition discounts” to 32 universities, including Stanford, Boston University and NYU-Poly. AT&T also said it’s bolstering its Aspire program to drive further education into its workforce.
“We know we’re going to need more data scientists over the next few years. … But in reality, we’ll have more slots than there will be folks in the job market to fill,” Donovan noted. “Plus, there’s a tremendous benefit to take someone that knows the AT&T culture and heritage. Our employees can view the hiring trend for this job and link directly to data science certification training. They can take the steps to transform themselves into data scientists. Depending on their current skillset, this could mean securing specialized credentials called ‘nanodegrees,’ which can take four to nine months to complete.”
Workforce retraining is often cited by telecom operators and vendors as the biggest challenge in terms of the ongoing migration towards virtualized platforms using NFV, SDN and cloud technologies.
“I’m frequently asked if it’s really possible for all our workers to make this pivot,” Donovan added. “The truth is it will take us years to complete this transformation. We’ll have legacy systems we need to maintain in the interim. But this is clearly where we need to go. We think it’s where the industry needs to go. And we want to help our employees get there, too.”
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