Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 29 April 2009 15:28
Business IT -
Technology
Page 1 of 2
IT skills shortages in the Asia Pacific region are affecting the ability of countries in the region to rebound quickly from the economic crisis, with regional businesses experiencing the greatest shortages in areas like enterprise architecture, application development and system integration.
A study by Springboard Research – Bridging the
Gap: Asia Pacific IT Skills Report – found that the shortage of skilled
IT professionals is impacting many industries, including the IT
industry itself, and negatively affecting the ability of regional
economies to rebound as quickly from the downturn.
Springboard’s findings are based on a survey of 400 IT end-users and IT
companies, 400 software developers and programmers and 82 IT training
and education providers in Australia, China, India, Malaysia and
Philippines.
Ravi Shekhar Pandey, Springboard research manager, says the biggest
current skills-related challenge facing the IT industry is not
availability, but rather gaps in the available skill pool, and, he
adds, the quality of both technical and non-technical skills is also an
issue.
“Where quality is not a concern, it is challenging to find enough people with an adequate blend of skills and experience.”
The report also points out that while skill shortages appear more acute
in the manufacturing and government sectors, the poor skills quality of
IT professionals is among the top challenges for banking & finance,
and government organisations, and lack of IT professionals with
business-specific domain knowledge the top challenge for manufacturing
and high-tech companies. In terms of vendor-specific skills,
Springboard found that Microsoft skills are finding favour with more
than 70% of those who are planning to hire new staff, followed by SAP,
Oracle and IBM-specific skills.
Shekhar Pandey says, however, that the economic slowdown is helping
organisations retool their IT skills, and the research points to the
fact that over 70% of the businesses surveyed are not looking to hire
IT staff in the next 6-12 months.
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