IT professionals will need to acquire a more diverse
range of skills to succeed in an IT jobs market forecast to shrink
40% by 2010, analyst firm Gartner has predicted.
The increasing role of IT in legislative compliance and
corporate governance will also push IT leaders to hone their
general business skills, according to Gartner's Top Predictions for
2006 and Beyond report, published last week.
New technology rather than offshore outsourcing will contribute
most to the shrinkage in the IT jobs market, said John Mahoney,
chief of research, IT services and management at Gartner.
"When you look at large datacentres and large server farms, the
task of managing them is becoming more and more automated. We
expect this to continue, so the automation of IT will be
responsible for more losses in IT jobs than outsourcing or
off-shoring," he said.
The IT professionals that remain in demand will be those that
expand their understanding of business drivers, the Gartner report
said.
"IT specialists must learn to demonstrate a deep contextual
grasp of their companies' competitive forces, revenue and cost
drivers, industry influences, product and service strategies,
differentiating processes, customer bases, regulatory requirements,
cultural constraints, and external suppliers," said the report.
The growth in legislation affecting companies, including Basel 2
and Sarbanes-Oxley, is also driving IT managers to develop business
skills.
"IT departments should develop a regulatory 'radar scope' that
tracks new and changing regulations by source of regulation,
timing, and size and area of impact.
"Regulatory tracking must be a key part of IT strategic planning
to make the business more responsive while sustaining and improving
business performance," said Gartner.
However, some IT managers may not be keen to acquire more
business skills, said Jorge Lopez, managing vice-president for
cross-industry research at Gartner.
"I am sure some do not want to develop these skills - that is
why they went into IT in the first place. IT professionals are used
to thinking logically about systems, but business managers are more
intuitive and have to make decisions based on very little
information," he said.