The end of the age of the techie?

Good technical skills won't be enough for workers who want to hold onto their jobs in information technology, as potential employees will need to demonstrate new business skills to attract employers.

Skepticism about the effectiveness of IT, increasing automation and offshoring will lead to the emergence of a new breed of IT professionals who combine technical aptitude, local knowledge, knowledge of industry processes and leadership ability, according to analysts at Gartner Group.

Workers will have to prove they understand the realities of the business, such as industry and customer issues and regulation.

By 2010, Gartner predicts that IT departments in midsize and large companies will be 30 percent smaller than they are in 2005.

Diane Morello, vice president of research at Gartner, said in a statement: "Some will be bolstered, some will be carved up, some will be redistributed and some will be displaced."

Gartner said that IT jobs will be influenced by four major trends:

• Jobs in technology infrastructure and services will decline in end-user organizations and grow in service, hardware and software companies, but many of those jobs will be in developing economies.

• Business intelligence, online consumer services and collaboration will grow in user companies, systems integrators and consulting companies.

•  There will be opportunities in process design and management in terms of competitive business processes, design of process automation and operational processes.

• Relationship and sourcing management will gain ground, demanding strengths in managing "intangibles" and managing geographically distributed parties with different work outcomes and cultures.

The analyst group said IT workers must focus their skills and expertise to send out a clear value message to potential employers. And employers should develop growth paths and career opportunities for these four domains of expertise.

"IT professionals need to act now by assessing and building their business-specific, core process and industry knowledge," Morello said.

Steve Ranger reported for Silicon.com.

[Marcus Westrup]

Not the right solution

IT departments 30% smaller by 2010 ?
I'm still waiting for the "paperless" office promised decades ago.

What's really needed are Business people with more Technical savvy, not the other way around. As I don't see this happening any time soon, IT will remain a big part of any big company.

Why dont business guys get tech savy

I have never been able to understand what is difficult in becoming tech savy - an I agree the problem is that most business guys are not. Remember savy is different from profficiency.

The times they are a changin'

Marcus, I couldn't disagree with you more. Our industry is going through changes that are driven by powerful economic forces. The analogy of the paperless office is flawed because the paperless office was based on the hope that certain technologies could replace something that was inexpensive and worked well.

It is not directly comparable to offshore outsourcing. I just happened to have found this same article on ZDNet, and posted a reply on my blog. You can find it at <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://surviveoutsourcing.com/jla/index.php?option=com_content&#38;task=view&#38;id=57&#38;Itemid=2" target="_newWindow">http://surviveoutsourcing.com/jla/index.php?option=com_content&#38;task=view&#38;id=57&#38;Itemid=2</a>


Steve Larrison
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.surviveoutsourcing.com" target="_newWindow">http://www.surviveoutsourcing.com</a>