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P.G. Daly's Intranet Talk :

What Technical Skills Does an E-Business Organization Need?

 

Your Company just formed an E-Business Organization. What technical skills does this organization need to be successful? Even if most of the large technical projects are outsourced, surely the group needs a core of technical skills to do some development and maintenance in-house, and even more importantly, to understand what systems are being implemented by these vendors and how it all fits together, technically.

Let me set the scene for you: Our new E-business group will support and coordinate all web initiatives for 7 businesses. That is, the multitude of Internet, Intranet, and Extranet sites that exist today and a host of others in progress. So, what technical skills does this group need to be successful? Currently, the group has 1 technical resource (that’d be me) and I would characterize this resource as "intermediate" technical expertise overall and of course there are areas of the web in which I have no experience at all. I definitely straddle the fence of business and technical, not being a super-techie or seasoned programmer. The initial organizational plan will result in this group being very top-heavy (managers and executives definitely outnumbering "worker bees") and soft-business skills outnumbering technical by 3-1. Since I keep hammering home my concern that someone has to be doing hands-on work and understanding the technical aspects of it all, the most probable of all things happened -- I got the assignment to compile a comprehensive list of technical skills that should be present in the group. As they say….."speak up, and thou shall get more work". Seriously, though I hope this exercise will help the group in both the short and long-term.

So, I have set about brainstorming a list of technical skills that I see are in need presently as well as those that will be needed as the company’s web capabilities expand (and more and more solutions are being used to interface with existing back end systems as well as planned data warehouses). I thought I’d share this list with you – both as food-for-thought for those of you in a similar situation as well as to get feedback from those of you in the technical trenches of the web as to how valid and credible my list is. What skills would you Add? Remove? Change?

Before I just start listing skills, I do want to preface it by saying, in general my company is a Windows NT shop. So I deliberately left UNIX skills off the list even though they are key web-technical skills for some companies. Of course, to make a liar out of me, as I write this, the company is considering a large enterprise-wide extranet that may use UNIX, but I won’t even go there….it makes my brain hurt! So, here’s my brain and research dump:

Skill	What is It	Why Needed
HTML	The markup language of web pages	Is used for web pages from the simplest manual HTML page to embedded HTML within programmed applications
Javascript	Cross-browser client-side scripting language	Used to enhance functionality of web pages, do client-side processing/validation for forms, applications, etc.
Windows NT	Microsoft Server Platform	Need to understand and administer and maintain existing and future web applications using this platform
Web Server Experience (IIS, Apache, etc.)	Web Server Software (non-Microsoft)	Knowledge of, ability to adminster/maintain web software that drives the sites
Server Administration	Server skills related to implementing, maintaining, and obtaining optimal and reliable performance from servers	Need to have reliable and acceptable performance/response from servers used in the broad e-business functionality
TCP/IP	The protocol of the Web	Understand the networking aspects related to web functionality & networking/interfacing with other systems
Active Server Pages(ASP)	Microsoft Server-side scripting language. Enables application functionality, database connectivity, etc. for dynamic applications	Currently used for web applications on the Intranet, could be used for interfacing to other databases for future web applications
Visual Basic (VB)	ASP uses Vbscript as its language, in version 3.0 it will use full VB functionality. VB is a MS programming language used by all MS desktop applications as well	Enhanced ASP and web component functionality. Additional programming capabilities for web applications especially as they interact with the desktop
Perl	Server-side scripting language (open source). Originally written for UNIX, ported to NT. Used for cgi-programming to interface between server and client as well as server-side scripting functionality.	Expanded compatibility, another way to do approach some server functionality since Perl is strong in some areas that other server-scripting languages are not. Will be very useful if UNIX is brought into the mix.
CGI Programming	Common Gateway Interface Programming…used to interface between the browser and the server (can be written in a variety of languages….Perl, C, etc.)	Ability to write/maintain scripts written to interact between client and web server….
Database Skills	I am referring to experience with relational and flat-file databases and the skills related to designing, developing, maintaining, and interfacing with a database	Capability to understand and work with/program against existing databases and future data warehouses.
Database to Web	Ability to create web applications from databases…dynamic web content	As much as possible all web initiatives should be geared toward dynamic information versus static/manual pages
Data Warehousing	Knowledge of/ability to work with, maintain, manage data warehouses (from ETL process through data mining OLAP, etc.)	Someone to be knowledgeable of and capable of working with the enterprise data warehouses that will feed the web sites
XML	Extensible Markup Language. A structured language to create meaningful data structures for web pages as well as other applications. Used by e-commerce vendors to have standardized data definitions.	It is part of the future of the web. Currently being used by vendors we are partnered with for b to b e-commerce.
DHTML	Dynamic HTML….a language which is basically the combination of HTML, Javascript, and CSS to create visually dynamic pages	Can be used to enhance web page interface and functionality
JAVA	Full fledged platform independent programming language. Used both for applets but also as a complex full featured object oriented programming language for web applications. Often used for API programming (Application Program Interface)	Many of the complex business applications on the web and that interface with legacy systems often use Java for development
CSS	Cascading Style Sheets. Used as part of an HTML page to separate formatting from content. Can be used to standardize the look/feel of an entire site	Can use to simplify look & feel consistency across entire sites
SQL	Structured Query Language. Language used to query just about every known database	Needed to interface/query data from databases to be used on the web
Adobe PDF (Creation, Forms, etc.)	Ability to create PDFs as well as add additional functionality to them (fillable forms, etc.)	A lot of content published today is in the PDF format
Graphics for Web - Design	Design original graphics for use on the web	Enhance look/feel, etc.
Graphics for Web - Production	Take existing graphics (print or electronic files) and optimize them for the web	Enhance look/feel, etc.
COM	Component Object Model (developed by Microsoft) - enables programmers to develop objects that can be called by other programs.	Increased application functionality
DCOM	Distributed Component Object Model – an extension of COM that allows the objects developed to be called across a network	Increased application functionality
CORBA	Common Object Request Broker Architecture. Similar to COM/DCOM but for various platforms (not just Windows)	Increased application functionality
Active X	An outgrowth of OLE and COM. Typically used for Active X controls on the web which a browser can download & execute a specific set of instructions	Another web technology to extend functionality of web applications
Experience Implementing/Administering 3rd Party Web Applications	Ability to implement, configure, and maintain 3rd party web products for use on websites	Company will often purchase the functionality needed out of the box & need someone capable of installing, maintaining, and customizing.
C/C++	Programming Language often used for CGI programming as well as API programming between disparate systems.	Ability to write/maintain programs that interface between our systems.

 

 

So, as always, let me know what you think. Does this resemble the technical skills in your web organization or at least resemble what you’d like to see in your organization? Or, am I off in left field somewhere in my thinking? Drop me a line at paulag@enter.net and let me know. I’ll share any feedback I get in a future article.

 

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The Author

P.G. Daly is Webmaster for the intranet of a large durable goods manufacturing company. In addition, P.G. writes for several online publications and does freelance web design and consulting. P.G. welcomes your feedback at paulag@enter.net .