Tim Akano, Chief Executive Officer, New Horizons Nigeria over the weekend release his ICT predictions for 2014, chike onwuegbuchi was there and captured highlight of the predictions.

In 2014, we are going to divide our submission into 4 parts:  One, Seven Hottest skills that will prosper ICT professionals; two, seven biggest trends in ICT that will determine which organization survives, thrives or dies in 2014.

Three, seven most dangerous ICT Threats and four; How Nigeria and Nigerians can benefit from all of this. Some of the surveys conducted by IDC, Gartner, IDG, CIO magazine are quite useful as a guide for investors this year to know what is on the horizon.

Meanwhile in 2014, issues like e-waste will continue to dominate the technology discussion as this is predicted to grow by 33% in the next 3 years.( source: IDG) New Start-Ups will benefit from re-cycling businesses of telephone handsets, Laptops and PCs. Another issue is the mobile banking users. This is expected to grow by 100% this year. 

There will be new ways of watching Televisions. Another area of opportunities for entrepreneurs with foresight is MOBILE INSURANCE. Since we are now married to our gadgets, this will be a new source of investment for the Insurers.

ICT spending will grow by about 5% in the ‘’traditional market ‘’ of Europe and America while in the emerging markets , double digit growth is being expected to be led by China at 13%(  source: idc), Adoption of CYBER INSURANCE will witness double digit growth in 2014 in Europe and North America where awareness of Cyber threats  is huge.

In addition, this is a year of what I call ‘’TECHNOLOGY OVER FLOW’’ i.e. hardware will do more things than hitherto because it is now more intelligent and smarter. We will see new touch screen TVs and telephone handsets; smaller gadgets; good, functional and value-adding wearable technologies will flood the market, high performing sensors, automated homes, schools, intelligent automobiles, smart buildings among others are some of the innovative products that will be born which will excite and tickle consumers this year.

The 7 hottest ICT Skills Employers will Pay any Amount to Acquire in 2014
This is not going to be like any other year in the ICT industry both globally and locally. Most of the ICT skills that will benefit the unemployed , the youths, the old as well as the ICT Professionals who are desirous of promotion are truly new skills or hybrid of old and new.

BIG DATA ADMINSTRATOR (BDA) – Before 2014, what obtained was Data Administrator (DA). However due to the fact that the request for big data is skyrocketing- growing  by as much as 30 %,( source: idc) there will be issue around big data management. Demand is currently outpaces supply with regards to experts in this area.
Most of these data are coming from Social media like Facebook, Twitter, Jelly, LinkedIn and 3rd Parties etc which Marketing requires on hourly basis to study the ever changing consumer behavioral attitude and taste.
Currently, there is substantial growth in ‘’data-optimized cloud platform- leveraging high volume real time data streams according to Gartner. Packages like HADOOP and Big Data Analytics are in hot demand.
Data storage has become an issue and how to build redundancy into storage and make the data fit for efficient and effective storage and consumption is a challenge that a BDA will be employed to solve by major international Enterprise. 24% of companies’ survey said they will hire BDA professionals in 2014 (source: IDC)

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS:  With Big Data comes the biggest job of making sense out of all the mountain of information.
Volume of global data will expand to 35.2 zettabytes (idc) in two years time. 18% of companies’ survey by IDC submitted that they are looking for professionals with Business Intelligence skills to employ in 2014.  It is seen as the second most difficult skill to get competent hands. This is why they command very fat salary starting with six digits.
In 2014 if you are dam, dam good in analyzing, interpreting, and presenting the data in a meaningful way that will help the CEOs to take profitable decision, you are sure to prosper as IT Professional. The joker is to combine Business intelligent skills with Plex Systems plus ERP plus Project Management. You cannot be poor again with this combination- if you are sound at each of them!

DEVELOPER’S PROFESSIONALS WITH CLOUD MOBILITY SKILLS: These are the gurus who build and maintain cloud architecture. There is a paradigm shift right now from ‘’infrastructure as a service (Iaas) to platform as a service (Paas).
And this is expected to be a data-optimized platform as against generic platform. More data centers will be built in 2014.
The cloud spending is expected to grow to $100billion in 2014 ( source:idc). Cloud application will become mission critical.
We do not have enough expertise in this field anywhere in the world. Those who want to make good money in 2014 are advised to go for it!

LINUX PROFESSIONALS: This is an age of SINGULARITY where OPEN-SOURCE is the KING powered by LINUX and ANDROID.
Open source has now been finally accepted by countries and organization who need inexpensive and stable platform.
And this adoption and shift is phenomena. According to Jack Cullen, President of IT Staffing Firm called Modis: ‘’ if you are an IT Professional looking for long term career growth there is no  better place to be than working with open source’’. I strongly believe there are huge opportunities in Linux and Android skills in 2014.

VIRTULISATION EXPERTS: The art and science of commissioning, managing, and tearing down intelligent and virtual machines are now one of the fastest growing roles of date centers. Experts in virtualization will be in high demand this year.

IT UNTILITY MANAGER (ITUM): Everything in ICT is in a permanent state of flux- changing at the speed of light, getting more fragmented and sophisticated by the day. The CEOs don’t have time to keep pace with this dynamic industry.
And the resources to employ Consultant for each narrow, new segment are not available. Therefore, the CEOs are looking for the IT Utility Manager (ITUM) who has a holistic perspective of how technology works and communicates among one another.
The Manager who understands programming languages and how to connect them on different and competing platforms: desktop, laptop, mobile, cloud, etc.
He has skills in information security and Biometrics certifications and he can integrate all this with Social Technologies like facebook, Twitter, Jelly, LinkedIn etc.
This year, the role of biometrics in authentication will grow while the value of password will decrease.
Organizations will pay any amount of money for professionals who have deep understanding of biometrics authentication- facial, iris, fingers, voice, DNA, palm, pulse, in addition to the above skills. I call such a professional IT Utility Manager. This is a new role- which did not exist in 2013.

IT SECURITY, COMPLIANCE AND GOVERNANCE PROFESSIONALS: To prosper in 2014 as IT Security professional, one needs to combine it with compliance certifications like ISO, PCI/DSS, and Governance skills in risk Management.
Yes, security is like hunger in the stomach, it never goes away completely. It comes out in new dimension every day. However, most organizations are not interested in employing separate Manager for IT Security, Compliance and Governance.
They are all ‘’FIRST COUSINS’’ and they are safe to be warehoused in one room under one command. In 2013 IT Security was a big challenge. Most of the top global IT Companies like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and all suffered security breaches.  IT security breaches grew by 23% (IDC) in 2013.
In September 201 3, major US banks were hit with the largest denial of service (DoS) attacks in history. Also in October, South Carolina tax payer’s services were hacked compromising 3.6 million social security numbers.
In August, hackers broke into New York Times computer and stole passwords of high-profile Journalists and staff. This is why 21% of companies’ surveyed said they would hire the guy with the right skill-set in IT Security, Compliance and Governance.
International certifications like EC-Council CEH, CHFI, Encryption, ECSA, CISSP Risk Management, etc will sell like hot potatoes.
This is why Safenet encryption is growing like bush fire in the harmattan, being acknowledge by Gartner as the best in the Encryption space.
More so, most of the things we predicted came to pass in 2013. Then, in 2012 based on the trends which we observed on the horizons in the ICT industry globally and locally, we came to certain conclusions in specific sectors like MOBILITY, Training, and Security etc.
One, that OPEN-SOURCE via Android and Linux will rule the Smartphone and personal computers. Today Android’s share of the Smartphone operating system stands at over 75%. We saw that because Apple is a ‘’closed system’’, and with high price tag vis-à-vis competition, that it would lose market share: that happened until it came out with an ‘economy iPhone’.
We saw then that competition was about to throw Blackberry ‘under the bus’ as a punishment for its sluggishness in innovation.
With Blackberry recent mountain of looses of  $4.4billion, it is a matter of time, if nothing urgent, radical and concrete is done before the  bus will crush the most successful Canadian mobile telephone giant, which used to be the darling of youths and the Military globally.  As we predicted, IT security breaches skyrocketed.
As we predicted, the seven IT skills that we submitted would blossom, actually did, and smart guys who took practical steps to acquire those skills really prospered in 2013.