She said that as the business opportunity of AIoT shoots up, the numbers of those who can develop the new technology will fall short.

In the past, software engineers were only required to learn a few programming languages to become fully-fledged programmers, but engineers now are required to be full-stack developers, knowing codes for both front- and back-end systems.

Telecos and hardware manufacturers are also expected to be poaching, and headhunting qualified staff.

Liuson has formed a partnership with Taiwan-based telecom carrier Far Eastone Telecommunications (FET) which aims to incubate talent to meet the coming shortage.

Microsoft Taiwan will provide training courses and certification of technology and data engineers to help FET establish a new-generation R&D team and transform its organisation and resources.

FET’s collaboration with Microsoft also includes the establishment of three smart cloud services: smart retailing, smart manufacturing and smart health care based on Microsoft’s Azure platform.