Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Ovum estimates that only five million new IT workers will enter the workforce in the next 12 years due to a smaller crop of college graduates and a dramatic decline in students planning to enter IT-related fields.
Tom Kucharvy, SVP of Ovum Summit and author of a new Ovum report , North America's IT staffing 'time bomb', said: "Two big challenges are certain: the impending mass retirement of baby boomers will deplete staff and starve many companies of critical skills. Meanwhile a shortage of replacements will compound both the problem and the urgency facing corporations."
Despite these inevitabilities, Kucharvy claimed that "few companies have even begun to address the critical need to manage a smooth transition to a new generation of employees." According to Kucharvy, there are a number of steps that companies can take now to address current requirement. And many others that corporations, in partnership with government organisations and educational institutions, must take to pre-empt even greater challenges in the future.
"Fundamentally reassessing the skills that will be needed over the next five to ten years rather than attempting to duplicate or replace current skills is the first strategic step companies must take immediately to address the issue. Individual companies must assume responsibility for developing strategic programs for addressing their staffing requirements and must do a better job forecasting for the industry what types of skills and resources they will need over the next five, 10 and even 20 years.
"Ultimately, leading IT vendors will have to work together to craft a historic coalition among the private sector, local and federal government organisations, NGOs and all levels of educational institutions to ensure that today's students will be prepared to assume the IT positions of the future."
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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