Shifting IT Trends

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued its August monthly labor report, which found IT sector jobs shrank last month.  In other news, BMC Software Inc. released its 2011 mainframe survey results, which shows the mainframe remains a critical platform and is growing and a non-scientific poll by Frost & Sullivan found healthcare IT professionals pervasively use social media.

Focal Points:

• The BLS reported August was a poor month for jobs creation, again, with zero net new workers added to the US payrolls. The US economy needs to add about 200,000 net-new jobs per month to just keep pace with population growth, and it requires at least two or three times that rate to make a dent in the pool of 14 million unemployed workers. The IT sector overall lost 3,000 jobs, with companies that run data processing and hosting businesses dropping 600 net jobs. In the two largest IT sub-segments firms engaged in computer systems design and related services added 9,900 workers while management and technical consulting firms, which includes an IT component, added 3,100 employees.
• BMC's sixth annual worldwide mainframe survey showed the mainframe continues to be a critical platform for the evolving hybrid data center. More than 1,300 global mainframe users participated in the survey, with greater than 50 percent of the respondents from companies with revenues in excess of $1 billion. 93 percent of the respondents expect capacity to grow or remain steady with 63 percent expecting overall capacity to grow, which is up six percent from 2010. 47 percent of those surveyed said new workloads and new business applications are contributing to their capacity growth while 60 percent said the top IT priority is keeping costs down. Just under one-third of the respondents said new workloads moving to the mainframe were driving MIPS growth. About 38 percent claimed they have between one and four IFLs, with 12 percent saying that they had between five and 16 of the Linux engines in operation. A few percent had more and 45 percent of mainframe owners have none. The zIIP specialty engines showed a similar distribution while 64 percent stated they had no zAAP engines. Only three percent of those surveyed expressed a belief that the mainframe was not viable in the general market and users should consider an exit strategy in the next five years.
• Frost & Sullivan, in conjunction with the Institute for Health Technology Transformation, conducted a survey of less than 100 healthcare users on the usage of social media in healthcare. 84 percent of healthcare respondents use social media for personal purposes, 75 percent use it for professional purposes within their institutions, and 68 percent use it for both personal and professional reasons. Only one-third use it as part of their professional obligations. Among the healthcare provider institutions, one-third do not allow access to social media for employees, primarily due to security issues and concerns about employees' productivity. The Mayo Clinic, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other leading hospitals are now going beyond public relations with their social media efforts and expanding into the realm of patient engagement including clinical research, compliance, and education. The report finds the federal government encourages use of social media for providers; as an example it touts the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) Health Communicator's Social Media Toolkit, which offers guidance for sharing health information through social media.

Experton Group believes these apparently disparate trends point to the continued drive for gains in IT productivity. Jobs in the IT sector remain on a path of shrinkage when it comes to staff that perform basic operational tasks; whereas, the more creative senior level architectural, consulting and design skills stay in demand. As IT operations transform and deal with the innovation and change required by business, IT executives should look for this shift of skill mix to continue and therefore, executives must address the future overhang of operational staff, which must be downsized. The mainframe myths are slowly dying as executives and staff recognize the value proposition of mainframe when it comes to availability, performance, reliability, scalability, and security. Experton Group expects the new zEnterprise servers with its array of specialty engines and zBX Power and System x blades to become a disruptive technology over the next five years, thereby driving data center operations costs down while dramatically increasing productivity. Similarly, the value of social media is not yet understood by most users or IT organizations. Over time, as it becomes more mainstream, it will empower users – enabling them to enter, locate and manipulate the information they desire, which in turn will lower the need for IT individuals to perform these basic operational tasks.