2009 IT Survey Roundup
As 2009 reaches its third quarter it is time to recap what the last 12 months of IT surveys revealed. Each year we look at the most recent surveys available on the net and summarize them here for your convenience.
2009 found economies around the world trying to dig out of perhaps the worst recession in history. Needless to say, IT trends over the past few years are up for grabs given the economic times.
Overall 2009 showed a return to IT Austerity. Here is what the surveys are telling us in the areas of:
- IT Salaries
- Priorities in 2009
- PPM Summit Findings
- IT Alignment with Business
1. SALARIES LOST A LITTLE GROUND IN 2009
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that given this deep recession that IT salaries fell in 2009. According to the 2009 IT Survey by JANCO Associates, IT executive salaries fell about .11% over 2008 levels; earning between $130,000 and $143,000 a year on average. Overall, IT salaries fell about .19% over 2008 levels which isn’t bad considering how much the economy suffered.
The bigger story on IT salaries is the job scene. In its 3rd quarter IT Hiring Index and Skills Report, Robert Half Technologies reported that while most organizations were maintaining their IT staff levels with some reducing head count. Those adding to their IT staff’s are overwhelming looking for junior talent. In fact 88% of new hires are expected to be entry level as opposed to only 16% for IT managers and 20% for senior talent.
Half reported that according to CIOs surveyed that 41% of staffing cuts were due to budgets while 37% were due to company-wide reduction in force initiatives. Suspension of projects accounted for 16% of layoffs in IT.
For most, winning in 2009 meant keeping their jobs.
The salary survey draws on data collected throughout the year by extensive internet-based and completed survey forms sent to businesses throughout the United States and Canada with over 30,000 data points.
Summary Results and Changes in Demand for IT Jobs 2009
|
|
Top 10 Business Priorities |
Ranking |
Top 10 Technology Priorities |
Ranking |
|
Business process improvement |
1 |
Business intelligence |
1 |
|
Reducing enterprise costs |
2 |
Enterprise applications (ERP, CRM and others) |
2 |
|
Improving enterprise workforce effectiveness |
3 |
Servers and storage technologies (virtualization) |
3 |
|
Attracting and retaining new customers |
4 |
Legacy application modernization |
4 |
|
Increasing the use of information/analytics |
5 |
Collaboration technologies |
5 |
|
Creating new products or services (innovation) |
6 |
Networking, voice and data communications |
6 |
|
Targeting customers and markets more effectively |
7 |
Technical infrastructure |
7 |
|
Managing change initiatives |
8 |
Security technologies |
8 |
|
Expanding current customer relationships |
9 |
Service-oriented applications and architecture |
9 |
|
Expanding into new markets and geographies |
10 |
Document management |
10 |
The business priority "improving business processes" has been the No. 1 business expectation of IT since its introduction to the CIO Agenda survey in 2005. In 2009, more than 57 percent of CIOs reported this as one of their top five business expectations.
3. PPM SUMMIT SURVEY
At a recent PPM Summit 137 IT professionals were surveyed on a number of IT related topics. While having a relatively low number of participants, the survey revealed a number of interesting results including the belief by 66% of the respondents that IT budgets will be decreasing over the next 12 months compared with the prior 12 months.
Most surveyed (69%) said that less than 30% of IT budgets were devoted to strategic initiatives.
When it came to managing the portfolio of IT enabled business services only 25% indicated that commercial packages were being used. An overwhelming 51% said that portfolios were managed manually. The results were virtually the same when it came to managing IT investment planning, IT resources and other IT services.
An amazing 69% of respondents felt that their organizations could NOT calculate the value IT contributed to business activity. Even more telling was that 83% indicated that their organizations cannot determine how IT is affecting operating profits or what the return on IT assets is.
Of the issues currently commanding the most attention the respondents indicated the following:
|
Issue |
% |
|
Difficulty capturing business requirements |
56 |
|
Request/project backlog |
53 |
|
Delivering ROI on IT investments |
46 |
|
Insufficient strategic planning |
44 |
|
Business users' expectations too high |
43 |
|
Difficulty communicating |
42 |
|
Inadequate budgets |
39 |
|
Shortage of skills |
38 |
|
Poor alignment |
35 |
|
Lack of business knowledge |
34 |
|
Cost to maintain existing services |
33 |
|
Dealing with outsourcers |
22 |
|
Dealing with pace of change |
18 |
As CIOs shift their priorities there still seems to be a disconnect between the priorities of the business and those being pursued by CIOs.
4. CIO ALIGNMENT SURVEY
One can only wonder where the breakdown in communications is between the CIO and the rest of the CxOs to have so much mis-alignment between IT and the business as to what they see as important.
Read the 2009 State of the CIO survey.
So there you have it, another year of surveys summed up into a few pages. It appears clear that CIOs are once again in the midst of chaos as they scramble to achieve better alignment in the face of cost cutting and sparse budgets. The prosperity cycles seem to be shorter and the austerity ones longer these days.
Hopefully, 2010 will see the recovery in full bloom and a return to a more robust strategic and aligned approach to IT.
___________________________________________________________________________
References
The article above is a digest of the following sources:
Michael Wood, Gantthead, 2009 IT Survey.
Gartner, EXP (2009)
CIO,com Magazine. State of CIO 2009
