IT departments will face a shortage of people with
business-focused IT skills over the next two years unless they take
action, IT analyst firm Forrester warned this week.
A rise in the number of older IT professionals retiring, a
slowdown in the number of youngsters entering IT and changing
skills needs threaten to leave employers with gaps in their
workforce.
"All the evidence indicates that Europe faces a serious risk of
shortage of IT skills. Companies need to take action now to support
long-term IT competency needs," said a Forrester research
paper.
Most employers plan to keep staff levels the same or allow them
to fall slowly over the next two years, the research reveals. But
at the same time they must contend with rising numbers of existing
IT staff reaching retirement rates, and demands for new technical
skill sets.
Forrester predicts a shift in demand away from programmers with
traditional skills like Cobol, to web developers with C++ Java, PHP
and Python skills.
Demand will rise for IT staff with expertise in ERP and business
intelligence, middleware, database storage, and emerging areas like
grid computing and RFID.
IT departments will also need people with high-end business
skills to manage a growing number of outsourcing contracts. They
will need knowledge of security, enterprise and technical
architecture, plus methodologies like Itil, Cobit and advanced
tools for administration, monitoring, security and deployment.
However, significant declines in the numbers of young people
entering computer science will make it more difficult for IT
departments and service companies to fill vacancies. In the UK,
Germany and France student numbers fell between 5% and 20% between
2001 and 2005, with some institutions reporting falls as high as
40%.
At the same time, the educational establishment is only slowly
adjusting to the needs of IT departments for a workforce with
business and management as well as technical skills.
Businesses plan to respond to these shortages by accelerating
their staff training, with both the number of companies training
their staff, and the amount they spend expected to rise between
2005 and 2007. But employers will also need to ensure they retain
key staff, and must be prepared to compete more aggressively for
staff as the upcoming talent shortage takes hold, said
Forrester.
Given that the education system may take time to catch up,
employers should look seriously at whether they should train staff
internally or through partnerships with local universities, it
said.