Recession impacts certification, training

Peter Dinham
Thursday, 23 July 2009 06:57

IT People - Training

Raina says software certification and training growth in Asia Pacific’s key markets is also being driven by a number of different local factors.
 
According to Raina, in Australia the government has identified the need for skilled resources to remain globally competitive and has made US$56 million available for IT training over four years as part of its US$837 million program to ease the skills crisis. 

“Although around 13.5 percent of employed Australians hold relevant qualifications, Australia still faces declining numbers of IT engineers to meet industry need because of demographic trends.  Identifying and establishing this as a national competiveness development area opens up potential future opportunity for IT training and certification providers in the Australian market.”

In Singapore, Raina says investment to expand the IT workforce is also driving the market, with Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) investing US$47 million by 2013 to expand the IT workforce.
 
And, according to Gartner, the Indian IT training market was estimated to be around US$700 million in 2008 and is mainly fueled by the demand for on-site deployment of certified training resources and the maturity and robustness of the domestic economy, with estimates from the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) indicating that the Indian software industry will require 2.3 million professionals by 2010.

Raina concludes that although the training and certification markets in Asia/Pacific will experience a temporary decline this year due to recession-induced budget cuts, the need for trained IT personnel continues to grow and, he suggests, “enterprises and vendors need to work together to collectively deal with this scenario.”