IT News March/April 2012

Creating culture of IT innovation includes rewarding failure – Computerworld lnkd.in/mfGKif

In IT Projects, More Needs to Be Less Too – Information Management Blogs Article lnkd.in/rFZ3CK

Personal and Enterprise IT Gains – Information Management Blogs Article lnkd.in/fu9VKq

Attention tech sales people: Don’t go around the CIO :: Editor’s Blog at WRAL Tech Wire lnkd.in/SbT5YF

IT Must Provide Enterprise Collaboration Tools Employees Will Use lnkd.in/nf6qa9

When Will the Offshore Flow of IT and Finance Jobs End? CIO.com lnkd.in/YcF2vP

Bring your own tech: IT’s missed opportunity | Byod – InfoWorld lnkd.in/sHUXmm

Offshoring Shrinks Number of IT Jobs, Study Says CIO.com lnkd.in/553iN6

CIOs Overcome Shortage of Business Analytics Talent lnkd.in/ukwwzv

India’s IT Firms Hire U.S. Workers As They Fight for Visas CIO.com lnkd.in/fDhir8

Small Business Data Backup Plans Found Lacking – Small and Medium Business IT – News & Reviews – Baseline.com lnkd.in/yHWPaZ

Execs to IT: Take these cloud services and manage them | Cloud storage – InfoWorld lnkd.in/t6AMGu

How to Get a Hot Job in Big Data CIO.com lnkd.in/DWHzEX

Getting A Recommendation From A Past Employer lnkd.in/AnAXJE

Offshoring Shrinks Number of IT Jobs, Study Says CIO.com lnkd.in/8RnBUz

Why the ‘personal cloud’ is no PC killer | Cloud computing – InfoWorld lnkd.in/7byGYH

2011 Predictions for IT Management

2011 will be a big year for IT change and growth, here is a look at a few predictions for how the IT industry will change.

2011 will be a big year for IT change and growth, especially as IT budgets are back on the rise – Gartner has even predicted that spending, specifically on IT, will increase by 60% (per employee). Here is a look at a few predictions on how the IT industry will change and grow over the next year:

A new hybrid desktop world is emerging, where users interact with multiple sessions (or “screens”). The primary screen for most users is still their local rich desktop that resides at their physical workstation, but more and more that’s being supplemented with a form of a virtual desktop. These can be hosted in the data center on Terminal Services, directly on a hypervisor, or on the client through type-1 or 2 hypervisors. In addition, multiple models for application delivery have emerged (i.e. application virtualization and streaming), which also cannot be effectively managed with legacy product sets. With all these new forms of desktop “screens”, hosting centers and application delivery mechanisms coming together, IT is facing major management challenges. Organizations need to look at a more strategic desktop management platform to help streamline the oversight of their desktops and also increase the automation functionality used in making updates and/or changes to this part of their environment. Most current models do not support this type of management. Some of the major technology providers, like Microsoft and Citrix provide multiple desktop and application delivery products, yet they do not currently provide a unified way of managing these related, yet disparate models. Now imagine trying to manage a multi-vendor delivery environment? The need for a unified management solution becomes crystal clear.

With Windows XP support ending at the end of this year, the need for a central management solution will also be enhanced by a predicted jump in the adoption rate for Windows 7 in 2011. During the Windows 7 migration, IT managers will face significant challenges when dealing with the reconfiguration of user settings, as with most updates of this kind. However, there is a solution to make this and future migrations easier. Separating a user’s desktop environment from the underlying operating system and hardware is one way to create an infrastructure that is more adaptable to change. This type of dynamic desktop environment allows IT to centrally manage changes like migrations or wide-spread updates without disrupting the access that employees need to their applications, data and printers, etc, and allowing users to retain their personal settings.

Security will also be extremely important in 2011, especially in the hybrid environments discussed above. Once the environment becomes centrally managed from a single console, security is simplified as it enables consistent security across the entire infrastructure. When considering security, the dynamic desktop environment should also employ a context aware approach. This is another area we expect to see growth continue in 2011. With this functionally, IT can determine which rights and limitations apply to a particular user based on their location or even time of day, and apply those rights to applications, data, printing and personal settings. As a result, IT can ensure that users get only the services they need, when they need them and also create rules to ensure certain sensitive applications, like financial databases, aren’t accessible from unsecure login points.

The last trend we see coming to light in 2011 is an increased demand for solutions that improve automation across infrastructures. This will be a critical feature in ensuring IT sees faster return on investment from all of its technology investments. After unifying and managing each desktop and application delivery platform, the end-user experience and

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Staffing, IT Recruiting – Dice: US IT Hiring Set to Rise in 2011

The story “Dice: US IT hiring set to rise in 2011,” has been clarified to indicate that results cited were from two separate surveys. It was not clear from information provided by the company that the results were from two surveys. The first, second, fourth, seventh and 11th paragraphs have been clarified to indicate which results were cited. The paragraphs now read, in order:

IDG News Service — The story “Dice: US IT hiring set to rise in 2011,” has been clarified to indicate that results cited were from two separate surveys. It was not clear from information provided by the company that the results were from two surveys. The first, second, fourth, seventh and 11th paragraphs have been clarified to indicate which results were cited. The paragraphs now read, in order:

First:

Six in 10 hiring managers and technology recruiters expect to do more hiring in the first half of 2011 than in the previous six months, according to the latest Dice.com report on IT hiring plans.

Second:

Dice surveys human resource managers and recruiters of technology professionals across the U.S. every six months, and its parent company Dice Holdings also conducts surveys, the most recent of which indicates “slow gradual recovery in the labor market,” said Scot Melland, chairman, president and CEO of Dice Holdings, which operates the Dice.com IT and engineering jobs and recruiting services website. Nearly half of the almost 850 respondents in the most recent Dice.com survey say they expect to increase hiring by at least 10 percent in the first half of 2011, with another third expecting increases of 11 percent to 20 percent, and 15 percent forecasting hiring 21 percent to 30 percent more technology workers.

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Jobs Outlook Modest for 2011

Perhaps the best thing that will be said about 2010 and IT hiring is that large layoffs have tapered off and the overall trend seems to favor hiring.

Computerworld — Perhaps the best thing that will be said about 2010 and IT hiring is that large layoffs have tapered off and the overall trend seems to favor hiring.

For sure, IT workers are still losing their jobs, particularly in the weakest areas of economy, such as in state and local government. Camden, NJ, for example, recently announced a plan to lay off one in four city workers to cover a large budget shortfall.

About four IT workers in Camden will be axed if this plan is adopted, and the city says in a report that that cuts will mean “the network will not function effectively.” City officials did not respond to request for comment.

Tech spending is expected to rebound next year, with IDC predicting 5.7% growth next year worldwide after 3% this year. But how will that spending on tech translate into hiring with offshore outsourcing increasing ?

The latest evidence that IT hiring is improving overall comes from a new study from Computer Economics, which surveyed IT managers at 136 firms in the U.S. and Canada with revenues above $50 million. It found that 48% of managers planned to add staff next year, with 11% planning to reduce staff.

John Longwell, vice president of research at Computer Economics, said, “The layoffs are over, people are starting to add workers to their payrolls but it is going to be modest.”

The survey looked at operational spending in IT, those functions needed for day-to-day operations, and about half of that cost is in salaries, Longwell said.

Longwell said that companies are beginning to take on new IT projects, extending staff hours, hiring contractors — and turning to outsourcing . In this quarter, 27% planned to hire and 14% said they were going to decrease staff.

Longwell characterized this year as one of “nervous stability,” and said IT operational budget are still restrained and users in their survey are planning for 2% growth.

Capital spending in the IT industry is projected to increase next year, which will help tech hiring, and offshore outsourcing will send lower rung IT jobs overseas.

David Foote, CEO of IT workforce analyst firm Foote Partners, said he believes the demand for IT skills – not necessarily full-time workers — is stronger, but difficult to track because it is being increasingly spread throughout companies.

Foote says he is seeing a lot demand for specific skills by business units in areas such as predictive analytics, architecture, social media, and security functions that are attached to finance, accounting, and auditing, and not to central IT operations.

Read More here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Jobs That Need Filling

Even with thousands upon thousands of experienced IT pros looking for work, many information technology executives say they are finding it difficult to find talented workers in several key areas of their organizations. Maybe they’re not trying hard enough, or maybe they’re just looking in the wrong places or maybe there exists a mismatch between available workers and the specific jobs open in today’s marketplace. IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology recently asked the following question of 1,400 IT leaders, from companies with more than 100 employees: “In which functional area is it most challenging to find skilled IT professionals?” The answer was something of a mixed bag and one that leaves many questions about the state of IT hiring.  The execs mentioned a number of specific tasks that are going begging, with spots in networking, security and help desk support taking the top spots. Only a relatively small fraction said they could find all the talent they need. Where are you experiencing problems in the job market?

View the slideshow here

See also IT Skills in Demand Now

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Staffing: Tech Jobs Grow During First Half of 2010

Job growth indicates that the technology industry is creeping out of the recession, according to a tech industry trade group.

The U.S. high-tech industry is showing signs of job growth and economic recovery, having added 30,200 tech jobs during the first half of 2010, according to the TechAmerica Foundation, whose data is based on numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The TechAmerica Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group for the technology industry, tracked job growth in three of four sectors of the technology industry between January and June 2010. The tech services sector added the most jobs (29,700) during that period, followed by the software services sector, which netted 14,200 jobs. Technology manufacturers ranked third, with 9,100 net new jobs between January and June 2010.

Communications services, which includes Internet and telecom companies, was the one sector of the technology industry that lost jobs during the first half of the year. It dropped 22,800 jobs.

“As one of the last industries to feel the effects of the recession, the technology industry now appears to be slowly turning the corner with the rest of the economy,” said Phil Bond, president and CEO of TechAmerica, in a statement.

But employment in the tech industry still has a ways to go before it gets back up to even early 2009 levels. As of June 2010, tech industry employment reached 5.78 million workers, compared to 5.99 million in January 2009.

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Staffing and IT Staff Augmentation – Project-Based Staffing

It’s next to impossible for IT employees to be experts in every skill needed to complete any project that comes up. To make up for this lack of expertise, many organizations hire outside temporary help. About 10% to 20% of workers on IT projects are contingent employees, according to David Van De Voort, a principal consultant with Mercer, a human resources and consulting firm in Chicago.

The task of staffing is typically an HR function, but the CIO oversees allocation of resources in the IT department, where it is often prudent to recruit specialized workers for specific projects. Establishing an efficient process for hiring and managing temporary workers is essential to the success of those projects.

One of the challenges in hiring temp workers involves finding the best contract workers and getting them up and running quickly and efficiently. Temporary workers aren’t cheap. According to Van De Voort, organizations fork over $3 for every $1 they pay a regular employee. Find the wrong people — or supervise them inadequately — and an organization is likely to waste a great deal of money in the process.

The upshot: It’s essential for CIOs to have an effective freelance-management system. According to staffing experts, a few key steps in the hiring and managing processes can ensure smooth sailing.Hiring

The first stage involves finding and hiring the right people. The more systematic the process, the easier it will be to locate the right freelancers quickly.

  • Designate regular sources Organizations often find freelancers from a few sources. Contingent staffing firms offer temps who specialize in IT skills. Some focus on specific areas of expertise, such as ERP applications or Java development. Because those firms are able to devote considerable effort to finding specific candidates with specific skills, they’re especially useful when the project needs only a few freelancers at a time.
  • Create a database of expertise An ongoing database of freelancers can list specific areas of expertise. “When you actually need the freelancer, you’re ahead of the game,” says Dora Vell, managing partner of Vell & Associates, an executive search firm in Waltham, Mass.
  • Clarify the job description While this step may seem obvious, doing it right can make a difference. Articulate specifically which skills are needed and the day-to-day duties will be performed, as well as the size and scope of the project, specific benchmarks, timelines, and other expectations for performance. Failure to do so often leads to hiring the wrong person. “We have to make sure we have every detail nailed down so we provide the right candidate,” says Kevin Knau, executive vice president of Hudson, a Chicago staffing firm.

Managing

Once the right freelancers are on board, they have to be supervised. While management of contract workers requires some of the same steps used when overseeing any employee, there are additional issues to consider, as well.

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Job Satisfaction in a Rut

It’s getting tough out there for IT employees facing long workdays, short tempers and limited career options.

Computerworld — The Jet Blue flight attendant’s dramatic de-planing last week says a lot about workplace frustration, a problem that may be increasing in IT.

A few days before flight attendant Steven Slater released a rear chute and exited his career with a couple of cans of beer in hand, an organization of IBM users meeting at the Share conference in Boston held an informal discussion entitled “The Mythical 40-Hour Week.”

It wasn’t a gripe session as much as a chance to share notes about what’s going in IT workplaces since the Great Recession. What emerged was an insider’s view of the frustrations building among tech workers as work days lengthen, pay remains stagnant and career growth appears thwarted.

Those taking part in the discussion asked that their names not be used so they could speak frankly.

“You don’t know how many hours you work – it’s all about getting the job done,” said one IT worker. “There are lots, lots of people in IT who are expected to work far more than a 40-hour week,” said another. Sixty hour weeks are common.

Yet another worker described bosses who expect their employees to work late into the night if need be to fix problems and then be on the job the next day at the usual time. Even vacation time is no longer sacrosanct: one person said he expects to be contacted “more than a half dozen times” during his time off.

Even if companies are getting more unpaid hours from their workers in today’s climate, the companies themselves may be getting hurt in other ways, according to the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) in Washington, D.C. The CEB conducts ongoing behavioral surveys of employee attitudes, and many of its clients are Fortune 500 firms.

The willingness of employees to “exert high levels of discretionary effort” — or put in the extra effort to get a job done — remains at low levels, the CEB found in its most recent survey, completed in the second quarter.

This willingness to put in extra effort fell from about 12% of workers in 2007 to about 4% last year. It was the lowest level in 10 years. The latest CEB survey of nearly 20,000 IT workers said that percentage had changed little and is now at 4.6%.

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171

IT Job Satisfaction in a Rut


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

IT Staffing: IT Hiring Continues to Improve, According to Surveys

Hiring for IT jobs continues on the upswing in the U.S. and Canada as recessionary gloom gives way to cautious optimism, according to various recent polls of employers, who cite networking, security, virtualization and database skills as among the most sought-after.

IDG News Service — Hiring for IT jobs continues on the upswing in the U.S. and Canada as recessionary gloom gives way to cautious optimism, according to various recent polls of employers, who cite networking, security, virtualization and database skills as among the most sought-after.

“Overall, employer confidence is improving,” said Tom Silver, senior vice president, North America, at Dice Holdings, which operates Dice.com, a technology and engineering careers website. “We hear that as we speak to our customers every day.”

The most recent edition of The Dice Report, which heard from 600 respondents across the U.S. who hire or recruit technology professionals, found that 71 percent expect to add more employees in the second half of the year than they did in the first. More than half of that 71 percent expect to hire 10 or more new IT staff members. Likewise, CDW’s IT Monitor has had similar findings in its surveys across the U.S. and in some areas of Canada.

The IT Monitor recently found that 37 percent of IT decision makers at large companies expect to hire more IT staff in the rest of the year, which is up 11 percentage points from a year ago — the size of the increase was “a much faster jump than I would have expected to see,” said Matt Troka, CDW vice president of product and partner management and acting CMO.

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous

2010 IT spending still looks strong, Forrester says

IDG News Service – Despite fears caused by the European debt crisis, spending on technology products and services is set to continue growing around the world, although the pace of growth in Europe overall will be lower, Forrester Research said in a report released Tuesday.

U.S. IT goods and services spending will jump 9.9% in 2010 to $564 billion, compared to 7.8% growth worldwide to $1.58 trillion, Forrester said.

Canada will experience the highest IT spending growth this year with a 16.2% rise, according to Forrester. IT spending in Latin America is set to grow 15.4%, followed by Asia-Pacific with 11%. Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa will see a 10.5% uptick.

But IT spending in Western and Central Europe is set to drop by 0.7% due to the debt crisis and the weak euro.

The US 2010 forecast represents a 1.5% increase over one Forrester gave in April, while the global growth rate remained roughly the same as the previous forecast of 7.7%.

Growth is being spurred partly by the fact that the U.S., and to a lesser extent, other nations, are entering an innovation cycle marked by adoption of new technologies, Forrester said.

Read more here

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

ProVisionTech Jobs – Dallas IT Jobs – Dallas Technical Jobs

Dallas IT Recruiter Guy

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171


“Save Time, The Best Resources, Guaranteed!”

Posted via email from ptg’s posterous