However, the skills that engineers need to have are not outside the scope of the transformation either. Personally, I still remember when I was starting out in the networking world, where I studied there was a pretty clear career map with certifications where you could see the path to take as an associate, professional, expert or network architect. The content of the careers remained virtually unchanged for many years.
Currently, these careers and certifications still exist, but more disciplines and areas of knowledge are being included due to the need of current engineers to incorporate practices that formerly were not necessary to include in their profiles but that today are essential tools for their role. Such is the impact they have that without them, phrases like "The network engineer is End of Life" are beginning to appear.
Now network engineers besides knowing terms such as Spanning Tree, VLANs, Routing Protocols, language of the networking world; they must also know or start to know other terms such as: DevOps, APIs, Python, Rest, XML/JSON/YAML, Git/GitHub, Chef/Puppet/Ansible, Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Containers; all coming from the programming world.
Programming and software are two disciplines that are impacting a lot in the networking world, in the tools that are used and to a greater extent in the culture that accompanies it. The aim is to move from a packaged model or boxes (routers, switches, servers, Access Points, etc.) that are traditionally configured separately, to a model of services and a model of network management based on business needs so that networks interact with business policies and automatically configure various equipment and services to respond to these policies.
Faced with this scenario, we must consider that one of the most important factors of all (not only for network engineers) is to work hard on the culture. In moving from a culture of fear of change to a culture of change, which embraces the new and is willing to try and fail and continue testing, allowing to innovate and improve what until then was considered traditional.
Digital transformation places us in exponential times facing constant change. As part of this reality, our best allies are the tools and methodologies that allow us to accelerate our results and improve our efficiency through the power of automation, clouds, service-based models and a strategic vision of continuing to do what we do well and migrating what we can to new ways of working such as DevOps and the programming of network equipment.
Augusto Garcia
Consultant Logicalis Paraguay
About Logicalis Latin America www.la.logicalis.com
Logicalis Latin America is a provider of information and communication technology services and solutions in Latin America with operations in Europe, North and South America, Asia Pacific and Africa, with an annual turnover of approximately US$ 1.5 billion. In Latin America it has a team of 1,500 highly qualified professionals, distributed in its operations in ten countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. With the mission of being a transforming agent of society, Logicalis works on the application of innovative technologies in order to accompany its more than 1,000 clients on the road to the digitalization of their businesses, always with solutions tailored to each need.
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