The future of IT will be shaped around BYOD (bring your own service), the cloud and virtualization, which will lead to a transformation of the role of IT manager from technical specialist to central business communicator, according to a new study by the Aruba Networks.

The report was presented by Aruba Networks at the EMEA Airheads 2013, IT industry’s leading event dedicated exclusively to wireless and mobility in the enterprise.

The conference held at the coastal Spanish city of Alicante was also attended by Aruba Networks President and CEO Dominic Orr, Keerthi Melkote, founder and chief strategy officer of Aruba Networks and Ammar Enaya, its manager for Saudi Arabia and MENA.

The keynote address and demonstrations were presented by Melkote. The address was translated into Russian, Turkish, Spanish and French to an audience of 500 delegates from several countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

An overwhelming 89 percent of IT professionals state that effective communication of policy and change to the business will be one of the biggest ongoing challenges they will face.

The study, 20/20 Vision, which sampled a network of IT professionals to get their views on the future of their respective careers, highlights the rapid increase of consumerization. Nearly half (47 percent) of IT professionals see BYOD as the trend that will most shape the evolution of enterprise IT, followed by data security in the cloud and virtualization (36 percent each). Consequently over two-thirds (68 percent) believe that the IT function in 2020 will be more about policy enforcement than technology deployment.

In response to this, four in ten (41 percent) stated that communication skills would be more important than technical skills and almost nine in ten IT professionals (88 percent) believe they will need to be strong business communicators in the future in order to be successful.

20/20 Vision was developed by Aruba Networks in partnership with Phillip Brown professor of work, employability and labor markets at Cardiff University .

The report used qualitative focus groups and quantitative omnibus research of over 150 IT professionals at all levels in order to help better understand what skills they will need in the future.

Launching the report, Ben Gibson, CMO of Aruba Networks, said: “In the future, IT and business will be fully integrated. To manage this, IT professionals will need to be equipped to communicate better, more frequently and more effectively than today. Communication is already a bigger part of the role of the IT department than it was 10 years ago, but in the future it is going to become even more important as technology becomes even more business critical.”

Brown said: “Future roles in IT will depend on blending technical know-how with the ‘soft’ currencies of employability, such as communications and business awareness. It will also require good networking skills, both virtual and face-to-face.”

To achieve success in their future roles, the majority of professionals in the study (42 percent) said they would need to rely on technical certifications offered by vendors rather than develop the skills in-house. This is part of a wider trend that will see companies rely more heavily on third parties. Another 76 percent of IT professionals expect the number of projects to be given to external specialists will increase in an “on demand” fashion. The report also finds that the needs of the business are increasingly shaping the role of the IT professional.

On a day-to-day basis the IT professional will see an increasing demand for consumer-friendly technology such as smart phones or tablets, while 78 percent expect users will demand technology that “just works”.

Aruba Networks is a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise. The company’s Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture unifies wired and wireless network infrastructures into one seamless access solution for corporate headquarters, mobile business professionals, remote workers and guests. This unified approach to access networks enables IT organizations and users to securely address the BYOD phenomenon, dramatically improving productivity and lowering capital and operational costs.

Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000 Index, Aruba is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific regions.