Believe it or not, there was once a time when anybody with a job in the IT department at a large organisation had a genuine right to consider their future as safe as houses.
But in the past five years, an unprecedented increase in the scale of UK IT outsourcing and offshoring means few IT professionals can afford to be so complacent.
With the exception of software development, where companies have employed freelance programmers for application building and amendment since the earliest days of computers, most IT roles were kept in-house.
Better use of communications, collaboration and remote management technology has changed that to a certain extent, but it is primarily cost and flexibility arguments that continue to lead firms to see more value in third-party provision of all kinds of IT services, including relatively straightforward tasks.
Mark Beaton, head of IT outsourcing at consultant Accenture, says the organisation is seeing an increased interest in outsourcing infrastructure management services, especially regarding datacentres. “This includes patching and security frameworks, as well as networks, servers and desktops, plus the stuff that helps companies manage that infrastructure,” he says.
And John Roguszczak, principal at specialist adviser Orbys Consulting, says all sorts of IT jobs are going from the in-house department to suppliers. “But the IT jobs market is still quite strong,” he says. “It is just a question of where different IT skills sit, whether with the customer or the supplier, and we are seeing that more with the supplier.”
There are no longer strong barriers defining what IT skills should remain in-house, says Ollie Ross, head of research at user group The Corporate IT Forum (Tif). At the same time, however, demand is constantly changing as the IT indust ry evolves to encompass new hardware, software and services.
“The skills argument is slightly different for all sorts of companies and all sorts of markets. It seems to depend on whatever technology is reaching an adoption tipping point,” says Ross.
Just as there is no rota of specific outsourcing roles, nor is there any guarantee that staff with a certain set of skills, knowledge or expertise will be kept in-house. But while the majority of jobs might head out the door, most organisations will always keep a subset of staff on home ground, says Marianne Kolding, associate vice president for European software and services at analyst IDC.
“Some very basic roles will stay in-house – companies will always need somebody on hand to change a card in a laptop for example, or re-cable a computer room, and you cannot do that remotely,” she says.
And the staff companies are likely to retain are those who combine technical expertise with knowledge of multiple IT operations, especially where this includes systems architecture design and building experience.
“The jobs that are being kept in-house are the more high-value skills that encompass a range of abilities, such as development, infrastructure, desktop and systems architecture, for example,” says Roguszczak.
Nor is it likely that any organisation will completely outsource the entire IT department – and everybody in it – any time soon. Even if IT staff are not required for the provision of services themselves, firms will always require workers who understand the specific way IT is used to deliver business value – if only to project manage and liaise with third-party suppliers.
“Organisations still need high-value skills within the organisation to understand what the supplier is doing. The thought that customers can outsource all their IT and not retain any skills in-house is just a fallacy,” says Roguszczak.
And for as long as people build new systems, Accenture’s Beaton says firms will still need technology skills within IT departments. “We are unlikely to ever get to a position where everything is fully outsourced,” he says. “Companies will always need new applications and new products, and will always change their systems architecture, and technology is right at the heart of that.”
In short, there are core IT skills that will always be needed close to home. But even though IT is hardly defunct as a viable career option, it might still be necessary for veteran workers to augment their skills and refocus existing experience. And individuals entering the IT profession for the first time should align their strategy to reflect new workplace demands.
Crucially, IT professionals may now find themselves under pressure to acquire more mainstream business skills to supplement their technical expertise.
John Middleditch, for example, has held a range of diverse IT roles including systems analyst, programmer, internal account manager and project manager during a career spanning more than 20 years. The chief technology officer at UK utility company E.ON says he has noticed massive change in what is expected from today’s IT professionals, much of it because of the outsourcing trend.
“When I first started, there was a great emphasis on people’s technical skills, but now there is a big shift to hybrid people who still have the technology skills but also speak the business language. You have to focus and engage to bridge the IT-business divide,” he says.
Orbys’ Roguszczak says modern IT professionals need to decide why they are working in IT, and choose whether they want to be technicians or whether they want to understand and fulfil the business need – a choice likely to either take them in-house or to a third-party IT service supplier.
“If they want to work at the business end and apply IT to business, there will always be a demand for those type of skills, whether in systems analysis, relationship management or design skills,” he says. “But if they are in IT because they want to be a techie, they might need to review their career and look at working for a professional IT firm, such as Atos Origin, IBM, EDS or many of the smaller organisations such as Syan.”
Middleditch agrees that the industry is polarising to a certain extent; the big service providers have a lot of technical skills and internal people have change management skills.
“IT professionals have to decide which route they want to go down. If they take the technical route they are more likely to work for CSC, Logica or someone similar,” he says.
While workers with technical skills alone are more likely to be outsourced, there are in-house jobs for technology experts willing to improve their knowledge.
