Wednesday, March 16, 2011

[itroundtable] Fwd: FYI's Quarterly IT Consultant Newsletter

 

FYI



 


--- On Tue, 3/15/11, Julie Bulfair <julie.bulfair@fyisolutions.com> wrote:

From: Julie Bulfair <julie.bulfair@fyisolutions.com>
Subject: FYI's Quarterly IT Consultant Newsletter
To: "Nicholas Ebe" <NicholasEbe@yahoo.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2011, 2:55 PM

FYI Solutions
IT Consultant and Contractor
Newsletter

Volume 1, Issue 3 March 2011
Download a PDF copy
North American IT Hiring Looking Up

Early indicators point towards an increase in demand for IT professionals in 2011, creating an optimistic start to the New Year. According to FINS Technology, a segment of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, Intel announced plans to add more than 1,000 new positions in 2011. The increased production of Intel's products could indicate expansion for the entire information technology sector.  

Intel's original plan was to add only about 1,000 new employees in 2010. FINS Technology stated that Intel ended up bringing on more than twice as many as planned to meet rising demand.  Intel's career website also lists an additional 1,100 openings that the company is actively filling.  


A recent joint survey between IBM Canada Limited and Canadian IT staffing company also suggests an increase in IT hiring in 2011. The survey found that 95 percent of the surveyed expect their IT staffing levels to remain the same or grow in 2011. The survey showed that only 14 percent of the increased demand is being driven by organizational growth, 23 percent by the implementation of new enterprise-wide applications and 34 percent is due to increased workload. Of the companies expecting to grow their IT staff, 66 percent said they will be looking mostly for application developers with Java and .net skills.  

However, The Conference Board's, a non-advocacy organization that provides economic data and analysis, December 2010 monthly survey of online help-wanted ads showed a slight decline for computer and mathematical science workers. The ratio of these unemployed workers to advertised openings continues to be one of the lowest compared to other professions and the highest in terms of the total number of online ads.  The Conference Board reported a ratio of 0.36, meaning that for every unemployed computer/math worker there were approximately 2.8 openings available.
 

The ratios in the Healthcare industry, including practitioners and technical workers
surpassed computer/math workers with a ratio of 0.33, or three openings per unemployed healthcare worker. This is compared to the production workers (e.g. manufacturing), whose ratio is 10.9, or almost 11 workers available for each advertised opening.



Sources: TechServe Alliance (www.techservealliance.org)

The Top Technology Trends for
Business for 2011

As the recovery takes hold, IT administrators and their budgets are getting back to the business of technology. Here are several trends gathered from IT experts and analysts that are expected to gain momentum and acceptance:  

§ 
The term "cloud computing" may become a thing of the past as everyone realizes what the IT community has known all along: the "cloud," along with its twin "software as a service" (a.k.a. SaaS), are simply 'remote servers and the Internet.' Business will gravitate toward renting server capacity and software versus purchasing their own. This, in turn, will increase the activities of IT firms providing those services.  

§  Responsibilities for IT professionals will change as remote computing gains wider acceptance. Private data centers and the IT departments that run centers will continue to consolidate and shrink. According to techrepublic.com," companies will continue to align their IT professionals with individual business units rather than in a central services group. The demand for corporate-savvy IT professionals who can serve as business analysts and project managers will continue to grow."  

§  Although the ubiquitous corporate desktop PC won't go away in 2011, it will likely lose some weight.  More companies will institute desktop virtualization by putting the company's applications and default operating system configuration on a virtual machine. Couple this model with a bootable Web browser (e.g. the enterprise version of Google Chrome OS), and the concept is elevated to a higher level. This also presents a whole new set of management and technical challenges to IT administrators.  
IT INDUSTRY TRENDS, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENTS
 
Low Unemployment and High Wages Persist for IT Professionals
 Although the unemployment rates for people in IT and computer-related skilled professionals rose for most IT occupations at the end of 2010, these rates remained significantly lower than those of the general workforce. Two IT occupations highly involved with software development – computer programmers and computer software engineers – appear to be in the most demand, possibly indicating renewed efforts in this area.
Occupations 3Q:10 4Q:10
Computer and information systems managers 4.1 5.0
Computer programmers 5.8 2.3
Computer scientists and systems analysts 5.9 6.9
Computer software engineers 3.9 4.2
Computer support specialists 4.1 7.2
Database administrators 0.4 6.0
Network and computer systems administrators 4.9 7.6
Network systems and data communications analysts 4.0 4.6
Source: unpublished tabulations of Current Population Survey data furnished by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 However, wages and hours worked appear to have moderated for some workers in IT-centric sectors in the past year. After rising year-over-year for most of 2010, IT services wages stabilized at the end of the year, specifically for custom computer programming services. Despite this moderation, workers in the computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing sector experienced an almost ten percent rise in their hourly wage.


11 Skills in Demand in 2011
 Global Knowledge, an IT and business skills training provider, released its list of the top IT skills that employers will be looking for in 2011. They are: 

- Cloud computing
- Programming
- Virtualization

- Voice communications
- Project management
- Business Intelligence
Security
- Web 2.0
- Unified
- Social networks
   and networking
- Help desk
 
What will the Future Bring?

Recently, IBM has been receiving recognition for its fifth annual "Next Five in Five" list of technologies and social developments that will change the way people live and work. This list promotes some of the company's research activities and can give a decent glimpse of what's ahead in technology. The list also offers additional clues as to where the next generation of IT jobs are developing for the near future.

But what were the first "Next Five in Five" things that made the list in 2007? Early that year, IBM gathered business partners, analysts and reporters to show off what the company believed would be commercially viable and on the market by 2012:

§  Real-time speech translation; no mention if Klingon would be incorporated.

§  Physicians monitoring patients in their own homes via sensors and the Internet.

§  Via nanotechnology, a cloth that can instantly filter non-potable water into drinkable water.
§  Development of a 3-D Internet.
§  The potential of "presence technology" for mobile devices essentially to 'read your mind' and learn about users whereabouts and preferences as they move about in the world.
 
Tips & Tricks  
 
Save Some Time with GodMode

Undocumented developer settings have been around Windows for some time, but none have quite received the attention GodMode has with the release of Windows 7. GodMode, cnet.com reported, is the term coined by bloggers, not Microsoft for this undocumented settings feature that allows the Windows 7 user to view a single folder listing personal settings options, rather than use the new Windows 7 Control Panel. One caveat: there are reports of GodMode crashing machines with the 64-bit version of WinVista.  

To make a GodMode folder, just create a new folder and name it (without the quotes):"GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}". The term GodMode can be changed to anything the user desires.  

Curious about other undocumented settings features available? A simple internet search will reveal a host of others at your disposal.
 
3799 Route 46 East
Parsippany, New Jersey 07054
www.FYIsolutions.com Phone: 973-331-9050
Fax: 973-331-9055
     

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