IT labor shortage: Companies to outsource

Society of Information Management’s (SIM) 2008 IT Trends Survey shows different picture than prevailing perception about IT outsourcing. The data shows that US companies are not laying off IT staff and shipping jobs overseas to cut IT budgets. “There are more jobs than there are qualified people”, said Jerry Luftman, an IT professor and the SIM director.

The common perception about offshore outsourcing is built by two things (i) media exaggerating IT offshoring and (ii) prominent and large companies outsourcing much of their consumer support to offshore companies.

The recent research conducted showed that offshore outsourced staff budget is just 5.2% of overall IT budget allocation for 2009. This is higher than last two years’ figures: 4% and 3.2%. In the catastrophic period of global slowdown such increase is a pleasant breeze for offshore IT services companies. The scarcity of qualified candidates in the labor market may be the reason for companies thinking to outsourcing their IT work. This outsourcing is still a very small fraction. The bigger threat to US IT sector is labor crunch issue which is going to become more acute with the impending retirement of Baby Boomers and the smaller-than-needed numbers of math and science students that are graduating and looking for IT jobs.

The offshore outsourced staff budget (5.2%) is much lower than 33.7% budget allocated to internal staff. It is still smaller than 6.2% pie allocated for dedicated domestic outsourcing. In 2009 offshore outsource staff budget has got increased as compared to previous years. Along with that budget for dedicated domestic outsourcing has got increased in 2009. In reality, US is creating more jobs for local candidates than previous years in IT sector.

The activities that SIM does to increase awareness of IT as a viable profession and maturing college IT programs may address problem of IT professionals availability but the big thing is that it is changing or will eventually change the perception about offshore outsourcing.

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New strategic technologies for 2009

A recent report from Gartner highlights 10 disruptive technologies for 2009 in IT area. The world is really changing quickly with the strategic technologies changing their positions in one year’s timeframe. 
 
The new entries to this list for 2009 are Business Intelligence that has toppled BPM and Specialized systems. 
 
Considering prevailing economic down time it make sense for businesses to go for BI that will ensure a direct positive impact on a company’s business performance, dramatically improving its ability to accomplish its mission by making smarter decisions at every level of the business from corporate strategy to operational processes. BI is strategic because it is directed towards business managers and knowledge workers. BI is a tool that will help business decision makers to take decisions faster, better and more informed. 
 
The second new entry to the list is Specialized Systems. Heterogeneous systems i.e. Specialized systems are an emerging trend in high-performance computing to address the requirements of the most demanding workloads, and this approach will eventually reach the general-purpose computing market. 
 
There is one good news for social networking lovers. Gartner has officially considered social networking as one of the strategic technology for 2009. Till previous year it was only social application that was considered as strategic.
 
Other technologies are same as of 2008 but will gear themselves to higher level of adoption.

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Congratulations to newly elected US President

e-Zest Solutions congratulates Democrat Barack Obama forbecoming President of America. This is a historical event since he is the firstblack president of America.

This victory of Democrats over Republican hints that USpeople wants a balanced economy on priority than war waging government.

There is a heated discussion on aftermath effects of USPresidential elections on Indian IT industry. Some say outsourcing will bedoomed but I strongly feel that need of cutting cost in most of globalterritories will need more and more IT. Barack Obama knows that curbingoutsourcing in one night will increase problems manifold rather than resolving.He will try to create new jobs and opportunities to calm US citizens’ agony.

All the very best to Obama for creating newer jobs for USpeople, seeding peace movement across world and helping nations fight globalslowdown successfully. India will keep supporting world businesses with itshigh quality and low cost IT solutions. 

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Resurgent India!

Hello from New York! We have completed almost a month of UK & US tour. We left India on 8th Sep.  Its tiring but exciting tour.

While discussing with our clients & prospects, to my surprise most of them were discussing Indian economy, Indian companies as prospective customers to them & how we can help them in this India endeavor.  Most of business professionals & entrepreneurs expressed their faith in Indian economy, potential of India market & revealed their future key strategy to look into & develop products for growing markets like India. Quality products, world class technology & domain expertise will definitely help to uplift standards of Indian businesses, infrastructure & social environment.

So, its great news for corporate & political India. Government need to continue pace of reforms & provide conducive as well as  safe business environment. Corporate Indian organizations like FICCI, CII, NASSCOM also need ensure that these international companies who are looking at India as a key market should not get duped by fly by night operators.

Regular violence & bomb blast news from India scare many here. But that's big topic!

Salute to India & her Mahatma on this occasion of 2nd October.

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Gartner hints higher IT spending in 2008

IT services companies can relax a bit with news coming from Gartner managing vice president, Joanne Correia. US sub-prime crisis has haunted software services company higher authorities with a fear of diminishing IT spending. But prediction from Gartner that worldwide IT spending should top $3.4 trillion in 2008, up 8 percent from 2007, will give them a restful night’s sleep. Much of this growth is due to the decline in the U.S. dollar.

Software spending and IT services are expected to see the biggest gain, up 10 percent and 9.4 percent respectively in 2008. "Software as a service/cloud computing, service-oriented architecture/Web 2.0, and open-source software are causing huge changes to the software market," wrote Joanne Correia in a research note. "Many of these factors are impacting market growth as enterprises replace assets with per-use services."

With internet proliferation on-demand services are on high. Even desktop bully Microsoft is trying to taste waters in web world with software as a service offerings lined up. Coming few years will be most happening and we may witness desktop losing major chunk of pie to cloud computing. But whatever may be the scenario IT spending will grow up at least in 2008.

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