Open Source, DevOps and Reskilling the Workforce with DXC Technology's Faisal Siddiqi and Chris Swan

On this special edition of the Futurum Tech Podcast Interview Series, host Daniel Newman welcomed Faisal Siddiqi, Chief Technologist, Innovation and Ecosystems at DXC Technology and Chris Swan, CTO of Global Delivery at DXC Technology. In this episode, the two talked to Daniel about the current state of upskilling and technology in the workforce especially in the wake of COVID-19.

 

COVID-19 Pushing Digital Transformation Forward

 

Almost overnight, companies around the world have been forced to change how they work,  bringing in a lot of new technologies to help the business run efficiently. We are seeing a rapid digital transformation. What used to take years is taking weeks and months now because companies have no choice. But this is also leading to another revolution in the workplace.

 

At the World Economic Forum this year, it was predicted that we are on the cusp or a reskilling revolution. An estimated 1 billion people will need to be reskilled by 2030 for emerging technologies.

 

The shifts are already starting to happen in the workplace. From a service provider perspective, we are moving away from sending work to low-cost labor to sending it to software engineering while at the same time shifting from software engineering to machine learning and AI where we are training systems instead of programming systems.

 

The demand for machine assisted technology is on the rise. It's augmenting how we work and we need people to understand how this technology works in order to make it work in the enterprise. This technology is not replacing humans, it's requiring a new skillset.

 

Building the Foundation Today to Upskill Tomorrow

 

In most businesses, employees are required to have certain certifications or degrees to be able to work on certain technologies. Some businesses might require a certification to work with their cloud partner while others might require a certification to work on any cloud system in general.

 

But emerging technologies are starting to require a certain type of individual rather than a certification. It doesn't matter if their education comes from a certification or degree program or if they're self-taught from an open source community.

 

In the future, we will likely need both employees in the workplace. The employees who have degrees in the tech fields, but also the employees that seek new education. The ones who are constantly learning how to solve new problems.

 

New Kind of Training Program

 

With upskilling in mind, DXC Technology turned to a DevOps Dojo to train anybody. These problem-solving programs aren't focused on if employees know the material. It's about how they solve the problem. They can use whatever program they want to help them — Google, GitHub etc. It's an authentic, on-demand experience designed to help people understand the new material in whatever way works for them.

 

Great examples of this style training program are Katacoda and Microsoft Learn. These two are designed to help people not just learn the technology, but master it as well.

 

Open Source Upskilling

 

Open source communities are a great place to better oneself. The right community can offer the right kind of support no matter what level of education you have. It's open to everybody meaning it's a great way to seek collaborative input from a number of people and it's a game changer for so many businesses.

 

Open source is likely going to be the onramp to help people and companies move from legacy applications to the multi-cloud world. It's going to provide the support and training that employees need in order to be prepared for new technology.

 

The Future for DXC Technology

 

Chris shared that DXC is on the cusp of opening several modules from DevOps Dojo similar to the Katacoda training. Faisal shared that DXC has a few open source projects now available on the DXC GitHub like the newly released AI starter kit.

 

Beyond that, Faisal discussed the importance of taking the foundation of open source software technology development and applying it to the culture of the enterprise to become better collaborative citizens. It's clear that work is changing and building a better collaborative environment will prepare us for the future.

 

If you'd like to learn more about what DXC Technology is doing visit their website and be sure to listen to the full episode. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode of the Futurum Tech Podcast.