(sel-fee)- n – A self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone. 

Welcome to 2015! I hope that you took the time to recharge your battery and rev up for the new year. Having said that, unfortunately, the new year brings on the dreaded ritual of overpromising to yourself and then hoping that you (and others) forget those promises by March 1. This year will be different.

I decided to take a good look at myself and analyze the image of who I was in 2014 and think about who I wanted to be in December 2015. I took a selfie. I wanted to “create” a better version of myself. First, I took inventory of my skills (I made a list), and then made another list of the skills I needed to achieve my goals personally and professionally. I made a third list of how I would acquire the skills I listed. While it may sound basic, this exercise takes initiative, courage and humility.

To date, I’ve taken two training classes that will help me achieve my goals. I not only learned more, but I had the wonderful opportunity to network with others who share similar goals. It’s funny how that works. 

In 2015 there will be an IT skills shortage based on new trends in IT. Forty percent of the trends that Gartner has predicted are new. It’s time to ready yourself and to make sure your customers are ready, too.

Ready, Set, Grow

While cloud, analytics, mobility, security, social and IoT will continue to be the theme for the year, according to leading IT research and adviser company Gartner, there will be new areas of focus, all of which will have a cloud dependency. New on the top 10 list for 2015 are:

Computing everywhere – Mobile device proliferation is an obvious trend. There will be a shift of focus from devices to how the user and device interact in different environments and contexts.

Advanced, pervasive and invisible analytics – Embedded systems (the Internet of things) will only add to the crush of structured and unstructured data already filling company databases. The amount and variety of data will demand more advanced analytics than are currently available. A Gartner researcher said, “The value is in the answers, not the data.”

Context-rich systems – The next step will be to ingrain intelligence into IoT devices that will interact with the advanced analytics mentioned earlier, resulting in systems that will not only report, but will also respond, to environmental conditions. According to Gartner, “Context-aware security is an early application of this new capability, but others will emerge.”

Risk-Based Security and Self-Protection – Gartner along with other analysts are redefining IT security and risk. Rather than working toward complete protection as in the past, Gartner and others suggest security positioning through risk assessments is a more realistic goal—and it won’t impede progress. Gartner also brought up an interesting concept: “Perimeters and firewalls are no longer enough; every app needs to be self-aware and self-protecting.”

The following chart is the complete top 10 list and how this year stacks to its predecessors.

So how do your skills stack up to the 2015 challenges and opportunities? Are you prepared to advise your customers? What will your selfie look like in December 2015?

I’ve taken the challenge, and now I’m challenging you to do the same. Our Ingram Micro training advisors can provide 1:1 coaching on the training you need in 2015. Contact us at [email protected] and put Selfie Challenge in the subject line. Ingram Micro training has one of the largest inventories of technology training courses and is proud to be authorized training providers of IBM, HP ExpertOne, VMware, Microsoft, Cisco, Citrix, Dell, Fortinet, CompTIA, Salesforce.com and VEEAM, to name a few. To search for courses, visit www.ingrammicro.com/training.

I plan to take another, clearer “selfie” in December and compare it to my 2014 version. Won’t you join me? If you’d like to learn more about my journey, email me at [email protected].

Let’s do this! 

Guest blogs such as this one are published regularly and are part of The VAR Guy’s Business Acceleration InfoCenter.