IT and the Recession

Arguably the best IT company to work for in the last couple of years has been NetApps. In announcing their results on February 12th a 6% reduction in labour force was sneaked in.

It goes to show the depth the Recession is taking now, especially in the IT sector. There was a time when IT was cool. But, sadly, it has become an mature industry that focuses on margin improvement, consolidation and efficiency. This is not bad as it translates to gains at the consumer end. Look at the desktop power available today ! Only a few years ago memory and disk sizes available today were too expensive. Now you can get Netbooks (see earlier Blogs) at sub $500 prices.

Technology that is cool is now based around mobility and "gadgets". This is where the money is and recommendations to new graduates would be have a look at companies like Apple, Nokia and RIM.

Unfortunately, as the larger end of IT town consolidates, the knowledge and experience of IT goes out the door. The Baby Boomers are leaving to Tree Changes, Sea Changes, Career changes or just the path of redundancy. I blogged previously about the cycles of IT and one thing is for sure, they dont seem to teach a subject called Computer History at University.

So what is the next big thing: Cloud Computing seems to be all the rage. Stay tuned for more on that...................

theBizWiz

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http://www.informgroup.com.au/