2009 is already a difficult year, with governments and
organisations alike preparing for a testing time. Corporate
spending sprees have quickly turned to cost-cutting initiatives
where every penny spent must now be explained and clearly
justified, writes Stephen Kelly, CEO of
Micro Focus.
One of the first areas to come under scrutiny during difficult
times is IT. Businesses of all sizes are totally dependent on their
IT, not only to handle their day-to-day operations, but to aid
decision-making, achieve competitive advantage and support
revenue-generating aspects of the business.
Ensuring businesses have the skills in place to maintain and
deliver even more value from these crucial systems should therefore
be a priority for 2009. It seems obvious, yet recent research shows
that even towards the end of 2008, only one in seven organisations
believed they had the skills to maintain their IT in the future;
tantamount to a ticking time bomb.
Global organisations are simply not devoting enough time, budget
and commitment to safeguard the vital skills required to maintain
and exploit one of their most crucial business assets during a
recession; their IT. These same organisations are running the risk
of finding themselves in a situation where they have no-one to
maintain and evolve their core IT systems, which could cause
irreparable damage to the business.
Despite the continual advent of new technologies, computing
languages and platforms, the majority of the world's systems - from
the mainframes of global enterprises to the traffic lights at the
end of your street - still run on computer languages developed many
decades ago. In a single year, Cobol applications are involved in
transporting up to 72,000 shipping containers, caring for 60
million patients, processing 80% of point-of-sales transactions and
connecting 500 million mobile phone users. There are 200 times more
COBOL transactions every day than Google searches.
In order to maintain 'business as usual', some organisations
choose to replace their COBOL systems with more modern
technologies. This is both risky and expensive - two traits you
want to avoid in the midst of a recession. Others however, in
recognising the continued viability of their existing IT, are
exploiting what they already have through modernisation
strategies.
Of 450 firms surveyed across Europe and the US with annual
turnover of between $100m to over $1bn, most admitted that
recession brings focus back to their so-called 'core' IT systems,
with 60% of CFOs in Europe and the US saying skills to modernise
core IT assets are "the most valuable in a recession." So it seems
alarming that, as a recession takes hold, the same research
revealed these firms are prioritising unrelated skills, in areas
such as Web 2.0 social networking technologies, over those they
deem as crucial to their business.
In times of economic turbulence, organisations are not looking
to rip and replace their existing IT systems, but rather glean
value, make savings and mitigate risk by modernising them. The
right skills need to be in place to do this, and the recession
could very well force a turning point in the skills crisis. With
academia, government and business working together to re-focus on
their core skills, the ticking of the skills time bomb could be
significantly slowed, if not defused completely.