The Recession Has Changed Your IT Job

In a brief but pithy report, the ubiquitous Gartner Inc. held forth this week on what we can expect of IT spending trends in 2010. And what the firm has to say could affect your job.

Judging by Gartner's, er... conservative approach to predictive punditry, one might reasonably conclude things to be not so great. But Gartner's predictions also tell a broader story about how IT professionals must start thinking differently about their duties.

Before getting to that, here are some of the report's highlights:

• Worldwide IT spending will reach $3.2 trillion for 2009, a 5.2 percent sequential decrease; in 2010, it should grow by 3.3 percent to $3.3 trillion.
• Worldwide hardware spending will decline 16.5 percent this year to $317 billion, while staying flat in 2010.
• Worldwide software spending will decline 2.1 percent this year to $221 billion, but increase 4.8 percent in 2010.
• Spending on IT services worldwide will reach $781 billion for 2009, down 3.5 percent sequentially; but spending in this sector will grow 4.5 percent in 2010.
• Over 91 percent of 195 "decision makers" surveyed by Gartner reported "either declining or flat IT staffing levels."
• A worldwide "CIO Agenda" survey of 1,527 CIOs by Gartner revealed that "business process improvement" was the top business priority for all, and "business intelligence" the top technology priority.

So what does this have to do with the IT professional's day-to-day reality? More than you may think.

For one thing, these results show that, while IT spending is on the rise, it's not growing in hardware, which was one of the areas where IT expertise was most required in years past. Instead, software and services are set to grow more than hardware, albeit in smaller overall markets.

Further, topping the list of CIO expectations aren't things like "networking, voice, and data communications" or "technical infrastructure" or "document management." Sure, all of these things made the Top 10 technology priorities in Gartner's CIO survey (ranking 6th, 7th, and 10th, respectively). But "business intelligence" and business acumen are more in demand.

So it's clear that IT jobs aren't going to involve the kind of hands-on tech support of years past. Further, increased reliance on virtualization and Web-based services of all kinds could drive out some in-house software expertise as well.

Indeed, there may be more reliance by IT shops on contract workers, as IT staffing -- an item Gartner says accounts for more than one-third of most IT budgets -- continues to drop.

"The severity of this recession may cause long-term and organic increase in the size of the contract labor workforce in many organizations and result in a permanent decrease in the percentage of their workforce that are internal full-time equivalents (FTEs), which now stands at 77 percent," states Gartner director Kurt Potter in his contribution to the report.

What's more, the move to business intelligence and Web-oriented services by companies of all kinds will put IT in a position of cooperating, negotiating, and, yes, competing with internal lines of business more than ever before. As ThinkerNetter Mary E. Shacklett maintains in her latest blog, IT must be able to work "collaboratively and continously" to get Websites to work properly. That requirement will extend throughout enterprise applications.

That's where the competition part comes in. IT managers will not only find themselves called on to know more about the business than ever before, but to know where to step in and where to draw the line when it comes to managing and paying for technology.

At least one observer says the new expectations of IT are in part what's driving business analytics, because only analytics can reveal the value of technology -- and help determine who should help pay for it. "Business analytics creates strong ties between a company's information assets and LOB applications and processes," says Charles King of Pund-IT Inc. , a research consultancy. Analytics may be the deciding factor as to which LOB gets what share of reduced IT resources.

All of these factors are forcing IT professionals to be more business oriented, more cooperative and management-savvy, and more aware of how their purchases affect the overall profitability of various applications. There may be more outside help and less job security than ever before.

Some of these trends have been underway for awhile, but they'll only get more defined as budgets continue to tighten and businesses reshape themselves in the recession's wake.

— Mary Jander, ThinkerNet Editor, Internet Evolution

This blog is part of Internet Evolution's IT Clan, which addresses the continuing impact of the Internet on enterprise networks, applications, and management. Register here to join the IT Clan's conversation, and you just might win something unspeakably cool.