ambition technology market trends q1 2011

8/7/2019 Ambition Technology Market Trends Q1 2011

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MArket

trendsrePOrtQ1 2011AUSTRALIA


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02 Ambiio tchology Aualia Q1 2011


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Ioucio

2011 is the Chinese year of the Rabbit; a placid year muchwelcomed and needed after the ferocious year of the Tiger.

Forecasters talk of good taste and renement which will shine

on everything whilst people will acknowledge that persuasion

is better than force. It is a time to watch that we do not

become too indulgent but at the same time take advantage of

the fact that money can be made without too much labour.

Our life style will be languid and leisurely as we allow ourselves

the luxuries we have always craved for. A temperate year with

unhurried pace, for once it may seem possible for us to be

carefree and happy without too many annoyances.

Now Im not one to read too much in to horoscopes but with

wishful optimism Id like to think that if even half of this comes

true 2011 should be an excellent year.

The technology recruitment market started without much

delay in the very rst week of January as pent up demand fromthe end of 2010 rolled over the holiday season and quickly

surfaced in the form of increased job advertisements across

the sector.

This year here at Ambition were committed to talking less

about skill shortages and more about skill re-alignment. Its

clear there is an imbalance between the supply and demand

of certain niche skill sets but whats equally clear is the need to

address creative albeit often simple solutions to train, mobilise

and deploy people in to those areas of strong demand.

Kind Regards

Andy Cross

Managing Director, Technology


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rcuim Iu

Effective goal setting for you and your team maximise engagement and retention.

Competition, internal and external how to keep it fun and healthy.

Bonus time ensuring everyone gets what they deserve.

effciv Goal sig

Anyone who has ever set a New Years resolution and then by mid-January found theyare re-assessing that objective has perhaps not taken the appropriate steps to align that

objective with some realistic goal setting and action planning. Just as individuals need to

set goals for healthy motivation and focus, so too should teams within businesses.

Many Technology teams operate in functional silos which can create challenges when it

comes to pulling together for common goals. Sure we all pull together for the sake of

company values and vision, and we all like to adhere to a shared view of our company

culture but are they enough to motivate and energise us? For any business or team, settinggoals is very important. It helps them to identify plans for their future and allows them to

create a plan for realising that future. Sounds simple yet so few people actively take the

time to follow the basic steps listed below.

1. Wi ow you goal. Its very important to take the time as a team to discuss

what your own personal and collective goals are. A problem shared is a problem halved

and a goal shared is a goal less likely to be ignored. Write your goals down and then

as a group decide how and where you will display them so that they remain visible

and clear to everyone.

2. s goal ha a moivaig y aliic.Sure we all want to double our

prot or claim ground breaking success in our endeavours but remember we are setting

goals here, not dreams. Aspiration is admirable and useful in its place but this is about

creating team unity and focus on achieving a collective objective.

3. Pioii you goal. Once your goals are agreed then look at what comes rst

and perhaps what is the most signicant goal to achieve. Its good to have milestone

goals, particularly when used in the context of achieving a larger (often project based)

goal or outcome.



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4. s goal fo h ho a log m.Long term goals help you to plan foryour future and often may require greater time and effort to achieve. Short term goals

can be used as energisers to maintain and fuel motivation and provide a pathway to the

larger objective.

5. rcogi a wa. As each milestone or goal is achieved remember to

celebrate the accomplishment. An important part of personal and team development is

building that feeling of positivity and success and recognising that your efforts have led to

an achievement of a goal or target.

Compiio

Its true that the world is a competitive place and corporate Australia is no stranger to

the kind of salesy, uber-competitive, and often arrogant style of work which lays waste

to cohesive, team productivity. That said there is indeed a very real need for positive

competition both in the market place between organisations and internally with teams or

individual team members.

Without competition Apple would have never created their Ipod, Microsoft would have

never created Windows, and Google would probably be non-existent. Competition

is essential because it leads to one very important thing, innovation and change. The

current education practice is often described as discouraging competition, to create an

environment of support and recognition where everyone who tries is a winner. Many

detractors however argue this is an unreal expectation for our young people to have and ill

prepares them for the real world. So what can you do to encourage positive competition

that brings team innovation, increased productivity, decreased cost and ultimately

business success?

The key to healthy competition is to focus not only on the results but also on the means

of achieving them. Have a code of conduct or rules of engagement which allow people to

exercise their competitive streak but within a framework of whats deemed corporately (or

ethically) just. Remember that arrogance is poisonous and fosters contempt and distrust

in a team or business, so to maintain that healthy balance be sure to allow winners to win

gracefully and losers to lose with dignity.



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Bou tim

Whenever bonus time rolls around, particularly for those in business sectors where bonusesform an integral part of their remuneration package, its always time to keep a closer eye

on your staff. Every year as recruitment professionals we see a strong shift in recruitment

activity immediately after bonuses have been paid. For many the bonus mechanism is used

as a form of employee handcuff that ensures commitment and loyalty for a period of time

whether that is annual or quarterly. The very real risk however is that once that bonus is

paid the shackles are removed, (guratively speaking), and so too are the inhabitations that

prevent an employee dusting off their resume and looking for work elsewhere.

The true notion of a bonus traditionally was an extra, out of the blue payment for

exceptional performance; a thank you if you will. Today the situation is very differentand bonus discussion is open, upfront and very much deemed a part of the

remuneration package.

The key to managing this risk is to ensure that bonus payments are not only linked to

achievement of a goal but are closely aligned to review periods and personal development

planning. Money is a strong motivator but the non-nancial aspects of many peoples

roles dictate the need for employers to stay abreast of their employees goals and personal

development targets. That combined with a bonus spread out across the year, over

multiple years or even tied to multiple performance hurdles will present a better risk prole

for losing valuable people resources.

In the event that you do lose your staff, remember thats an ideal opportunity to make the

next bonus discussion head on and with the points discussed clearly in mind.



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tchology Iuy nw

Compuig capaciy gowh ouip wol coomy x 9.

In a fascinating article recently written by Mike Martin of TechNewsWorld, he points to

a study conducted by Martin Hilbert, Ph.D., an information researcher at USC Annenberg

School for Communication & Journalism. That study looked at the changing trends of

informational storage and tracking 60 analog and digital technologies from 1986 to 2007

concluded that computing capacity grew at an annual rate of 58 percent, roughly nine

times faster than the world economy.

Whats of particular signicance or rather of mind blowing proportions is the scale of this

perpetual growth. Drawing upon a line from Manuel Castells book, End of Millennium the

proposition made is that whilst information today represents the creation of wealth and

power, survival of the ttest relies on the effective collection of the most and the mostuseful information. Nearly ve years ago over 290 exabytes of global data was stored on

devices of all kinds, translated thats 61 CD-ROMS for every man, woman, and child on Earth

and counting.

twi i li wa?

Intrigued? Id say the audience of the Mobile World Congress were recently when TwitterCEO Dick Costolo took the stage as the keynote speaker and announced that far from being

a micro-blogging site, twitter was like water. What he was meaning was that Twitter should

be universally accessible and easy to use across all devices and mediums; it should be

everywhere he said.

The mission for Twitter remains to make it easy for people to use and to empower those

users to interact on many platforms between user communities. It seems acceptable that

people feel Twitter is a social connector, similar to Facebook or MySpace, but for those who

really engage rather than socialise, its about the formation of a relationship that can bring

real and tangible benets.

And to prove that the growth is very real and much sustained, in 2008 Twitter pulled in

about 27 tweets per second during the American Super Bowl. This year it had 3,000

tweets per second.



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Ba la h way i tchology p.

Large nancial organisations in Australia are tipped to spend around $31billion on IT in

the current year with core banking upgrades topping the list of projects along with cloud

computing, desktop virtualisation and unied communications as the other areas of

investment. The gure represents a welcome return to spending in the Technology market

given the pressures that were placed on the sector prior to and during the Global Financial

Crisis.

MIS Magazine reported recently on a study conducted by ITNewcom, where 50 CIOs

and senior IT purchasers were asked about their upcoming technology spend. The results

conrm that the Financial Services Industry is still the one to look to when it comes to new

IT investment.

At least thats the picture in Australia, whilst the global markets are showing a slightly

different picture. Compare Celents analyst report which recently released predictions for

growth in nancial services IT spend for 2011. The anticipated global spend is anticipatedto tip $363.8 billion on technology with $169.6 billion focused solely on the banks.

A divergence in results with the Australian data however suggests that the bulk of US

spending for example is likely to go to maintaining infrastructure rather than exciting

new projects or innovation.



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Iuy sco

Applicaio

The market remains competitive with a strong demand for Java in the nancial services

sector. Indeed a signicant number of local Java developers appear to either be workingfor the main banks or for vendors and consultancies providing services back to those banks.

Hourly and daily rates are back on the rise with a reasonable amount of competition for

the better candidates through premium rates. A marked change in attitude, particularly

where highly skilled resources are needed, has shown employers less likely to haggle over

rates. Instead clients are expecting a candidate to know their market rate and to come

to an interview with an ability to articulate the value they will bring to the position. Local

experience is highly considered at present despite a continued inux of overseas resourcesin this discipline.

Demand for SQL and Oracle skills at the moment has subsided with many strong candidates

in this area looking for their next engagement. But on a more positive note the cloud

continues to provide plenty to talk about.

With the 2010 release of Microsofts public cloud offering in Windows Azure, Australian

Microsoft experts are predicting more organisations to slowly adopt the cloud solutions

technology, potentially drumming up the demand for certied, trained Azure specialists andintegration specialists over the next 12 months.

Bui Ifomaio

We are nding Project Managers and Business Analysts in hot demand across all market

sectors at the start of this year, with multiple offers being held by most well skilled

individuals. This places pressure on clients to move quickly and decisively when they see

someone they like or risk losing out to others.

Driving projects are a number of platform transition/integration projects for some of

the major banks along with a number of vendor transitions too. As money becomes a

little more available the talk returns to some of the less essential but equally signicant

investments around unied communications projects and provision of more technologyenabled smart ofce environments.

Of particular focus for Business analysts this year we expect Architecture skills to play a big

part, in conjunction with how to effectively align business processes in and around cloud

based solutions. Already more than a buzz word last year Agile methodology will remain

pervasive in how projects are constructed, managed and implemented as Business Analysts

and Project Managers are required to operate as critical point change management agents.



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Ifaucu

J P Morgan Chase has recently indicated in the press, plans to scrap a number of their

trading platforms over the next three years in an effort to reduce costs and bring increased

internal efciencies. They are not alone as businesses continue to search for ways to

streamline and improve internal technology infrastructure setups.

As the number of service and help desk roles continue to grow to meet customer demandfor service and support, so too do the more specialist roles of security management,

storage optimisation and network performance. With both business applications and

communications competing to share network infrastructure, the signicant reality is thatthe network must be managed much more vigorously to perform at peak optimisation.

Once again the number of new providers and indeed products in this space is growing, and

therefore forcing Infrastructure professionals to re-evaluate their own skills and experience.

Deciding which horse to back may seem as arbitrary as deciding whether to learn Java or

.Net but regardless of choice, the chances are they wont be struggling for work for some

time. A continued demand and rising salaries and hourly rates in these more fractured,specialist areas point to a rosy future for Infrastructure professionals in 2011.



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2010 has been a year of recovery, rebuilding andlaying solid foundations for future growth. There is astrong feeling of optimism across most industriesand for what 2011 will bring.



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SydneyLvl 5, 55 Clarence St, Sydney NSW 2000

T:+61 2 9248 6200

MelbourneLvl 36, 140 William St, Melbourne VIC 3000

T:+61 3 8629 1000www.ambition.com.au

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ambition technology market trends q1 2011

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