Rise Of The "New Collar" Worker 

Coined by IBM’s then-CEO Ginni Rometty in 2016, the term “new-collar” work blurs the line between “white-collar” and “blue-collar” jobs and refers to developing technical skills needed to work in today’s IT industry in areas such as cybersecurity, application development and database management, and cloud.

While emerging areas of tech have been opening up right along as trends like IoT, security, cloud, and collaboration propel the industry forward, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has caused massive disruption around the globe and is accelerating the need for brand-new technology skills. That’s because many businesses are not operating at least partially – if not entirely – via employees working remotely from their homes. Businesses are adopting cloud tools at a rapid pace, and everything from security, to IT sales strategies, have had to evolve quickly.

As businesses come down from the initial phase of getting employees enabled to work remotely, IT investments will need to be made in new areas to prepare for anything that may lie ahead. CRN talked with executives from two of the leading networking firms and solution provider organizations about the new IT jobs and skills that will be in high-demand in a post-COVID-19 world. Here’s what they had to say.