In recent time, the term 5G and IOT are the two most-used words ranging from academia, engineers, researchers to big players like industries and multinational corporations. The new generation of wireless communications, 5G, is believed to be a profound revolution of wireless technology in terms of connectivity, GBits data rate, huge bandwidths, and very low latency.
This promising technology has given birth to many other applications to enhance the whole sustainable ecosystem in the emergent industry 4.0, internet of things (IOT), cloud service, human welfare and many more aspects of the human civilization. The world as we know it is poised for an evolution as many technological “doors” that was once shut are now possibilities waiting for realization.
Since the world is progressing fast with many new cutting-edge technology, how ready are we in terms of skill sets to adapt to this fast changes? How can we stay relevant in our capabilities? There are so many crucial skills are connected to this industrial revolution. In this article, lets highlight 3 important skill sets that I personally believe an individual should possess in this new trend.
1. Network Architecture Design
Network architecture is the design of a computer system that allow connectivity between various devices and services. In lay man term, it deals with how data is transmitted and received from start to end, from hardware to firmware and software; from wired to wireless as well as all its protocols. It encompasses the entire system for communication functions to work.
By year 2020, the world is expected to have more than a billion connected devices. With 5G and IOT dramatically increasingly the throughput of data and information, the entire network needs to be able to handle the big amount of data from start to end. Besides, 5G which will be operating in a new frequency bandwidth requires new design at least at its transmission and reception stage. We are talking about hundred billions worth of investment needed globally to setup the architecture and environment needed.
Mastering this skill is measured by the depth of knowledge in the design of computer networks, sensors nodes, communication protocols, and both software and hardware interfaces. Besides designing, the ability to deploy, maintain, troubleshoot and upgrade the system is very much needed.
Lets just say with great throughput, comes great need for maintenance. Any companies wanting to tap into be it 5G, IOT or Industry 4.0 will have hire workers with skillsets to maintain the new network architecture in place. This will cause a big surge in the demand of engineer job skills both digital and mechanical to build and maintain the optimal network infrastructure ecosystem.
2. Big Data Analytics
To leverage on the high performance 5G network and to handle such a big data collected, there must be a storage kind of platform to process and analyse the data. Knowing this fact, big data analytics is one of the necessary skills required by big corporations and industries for efficient business performance and optimal profits.
We have probably heard of the term “Big Data” a lot recently. As an user of common internet and social media services such as Google, Youtube and Facebook, we would most likely realize that these services are intuitive enough to display ads that are relevant to what we are interested in. This is one of the more clearly seen effect from “Big Data” used by these service companies.
Basically, Big Data Analytics starts with collecting tremendous amount of information and data (as the name imply) among its existing user base. This data is then processed and analysed on the Cloud, known as Cloud Computing and translated into meaningful statistics.
Proficiency in big data analytics means you are able to obtain relevant behavioural data from your user base, derive an algorithm that process the huge amount of raw data and produce meaningful statistics that can help companies to clearly assess their performances in light of the statistics.
The keyword is relevant. Take for example you are working on a big data analytic for an ice cream selling company, you would want to collect data on what flavour the customers usually order, what kind of days they usually shop or what is the age group of your customer. These are relevant data. Irrelevant data would be like, what education level is your user base. Mastering this skill means you are capable of finding correlation between all the data you collected and accurately deduce the behaviour and trend of the market.
In an era where “data is king” and where businesses are driven by information, skillset in big data analytics will prove invaluable to businesses or industries, providing insight into the targeted audience, deriving better business strategy and staying relevant to the customer base. This in turn helps in increasing profit, streamlining the marketing cost and keeping up to date with the trend of the market.
3. Programming Skill
With the introduction of 5G, not only will it cause a demand of skilled programmers in industries and companies, it will also make programming a very relevant skill within the consumers’ world. Take for example, the introduction of smartphones by Apple, with it comes the introduction of the Appstore, which opens opportunities for all kinds of creative apps to be designed and published. Now, with a new technological breakthrough, and with faster internet speed, it will make many ideas that were impossible in the past to be feasible today.
Therefore, not only is programming skill something that is confined to the industrial practices, it is something that entrepreneurs and simple businessman needs in order to adapt to the changing market ecosystem. One can confidently say that almost everything used nowadays requires programming. Our common daily items had evolved from simple mechanical tools to smart electronic tools. One relevant example in our Covid-stricken world nowadays is the Infrared thermometer, which has replaced the conventional mercury thermometer.
For starters, one can learn to code, be it simple scripts or small and fun programs with different programming languages. Going into the industries, some of the major programming skills needed are Cloud Computing, security architecture design, AI algorithms and machine learning algorithms. Apart from wide ranging cloud-based application, security architecture is essential to ensure the safety of data collections or highly sensitive data from being hacked. Hence, any software skills with endpoint security will be very crucial in the future 5G/IOT applications. Also, as we mentioned in “Big Data Analytic”, it involves coming out with algorithms that can effectively collect and analyse the data and produce the statistics needed, which in turn, requires knowledge into programming.
In conclusion, to survive in this fast-paced world, where technological breakthroughs are constantly happening, one must adapt by learning up relevant skillsets required for one to remain relevant in the competition. As the world welcome the new 5G and IOT, may we in the industry or academia be prepared to support and augment these technologies with proficient skills, innovation and creativity.
