Cognos training closes BI skills gap

Business intelligence (BI) specialist Cognos last week revealed it may launch a new training scheme for IT professionals working with BI technology, to head off a potential skills shortage.

Graham Walter, Cognos’s vice-president for UK, the Middle East and South Africa, said that with the BI market’s current rapid growth, the demand for IT staff with relevant experience could soon outstrip the supply.

“You need people who understand the principles of building and managing a data warehouse,” Walter said. “If we don’t get people with the right skills it will be a limiting factor for the market.”

Consequently, Cognos is considering working with training organisations and universities to develop a BI skills course. Walter said the training would go beyond Cognos products, and could even see the company liaising with rival vendors.

Cognos is looking at running a pilot course in South Africa and plans to roll out similar schemes elsewhere if it proves successful.

Alys Woodward of analyst firm Ovum welcomed the prospect of a BI training course. “[Content on] extract, transform and load [ETL] software, data integration and data warehouse design will need to be included,” she said. “But the key to successful BI is often business skills such as requirement gathering.

Woodard added that good “BI professionals are strong programmers, but also have soft skills and the ability to understand what reports end-users need”.