Many IT organizations today are investigating how they can transform their departments from a cost center to a business enabler. Such a shift requires mutual understanding and close ties with business leaders, but high-tech leaders must also update IT staff, services, processes and technologies.
I already discussed recently how IT professionals in 2010 could be looking to update their resumes with new jobs that offer them more money and more opportunities to work with emerging technologies. And recent research shows that fluctuating demand for various IT skills points not only to the economic turmoil of the past two years but also to companies’ growing interest in new staffing models and potentially new IT service delivery models such as cloud computing.
A brief tour of blogs and articles posted online by IT industry watchers revealed that the trends are growing strong among the enterprise IT community. Forrester Research last week hosted its IT Forum 2010 in Las Vegas and firm vice president and research director Robert Whiteley blogged about encounters with clients at the show. For one IT professional, the discussion with Whiteley focused on IT job searches, Whiteley’s blog explains.
“It could be a sign that jobs are scarce, unemployment is up or that Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) professionals are being let go. But that's certainly not the case,” Whiteley writes.
This particular exchange involved on IT pro with desktop virtualization skills looking for a new opportunity and another discussion found Whiteley speaking with an IT pro looking to hire a high-tech worker with desktop virtualization skills. Despite the coincidence of the two discussions Whiteley highlights in his blog, he is quick to point out that there is something more going on than just a serendipitous event.
“These were not the only conversations I had with I&O execs on jobs, skills, and finding new talent. Clearly companies are investing for growth and in a people-oriented department like I&O, that means new jobs,” Whiteley says.
Whiteley also touches on IT cost management in his round-up from Forrester Research’s show. IT cost management is a well-known term that has been bandied about more since the economic recession once again slammed IT departments. But economics aren’t the only driver for IT organizations to consider adopting more consistent financial management practices. According to Whiteley’s experiences at IT Forum 2010, discussions on the topic of managing IT costs matured beyond making cuts to measuring value.
“What surprised me, though, was that people weren't asking how to contain costs, but how to measure them. Increasing levels of virtualization maturity and now the push to adopt cloud computing are completely disrupting standard cost methodologies,” Whiteley recalls in his blog post. “A lot of I&O execs were curious to know what tools and processes are available to build more rigorous cost models.”
Separately, an article in InformationWeek discusses how the Army is outlining a cloud computing strategy, proving there is more real-world examples to support the media hype around the technology. And a blog by CA Technologies’ Robert Stroud discusses the necessity for IT service management when it comes to adopting cloud computing.
“IT is changing! Businesses that once depended entirely on IT to deliver services are transitioning to a mix of internal IT and external service providers to meet the demands of their business,” Stroud writes in the blog post. “IT is going to be required to have a good understanding of how the supplier network components will work with the internally delivered components to deliver the service. Additionally IT is going to have to ensure that the aggregation of components is at a price that the service can bear and be delivered at an acceptable cost whilst meeting the performance SLA.”
Posted by Denise Dubie
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