Market Trends Report

Q1 2010
Technology Recruitment
Australia
Introduction
Welcome to the first quarter edition of the 2010 Ambition, Australian
Technology Market Trends Report. We start the year with fresh optimism that
2009 is a distant memory and the year ahead is the opportunity to re-write the
profit sheets of our respective businesses.
No doubt 2009 was a tough year for the IT industry, largely as a result of the
global economic downturn, which had a direct impact on enterprise IT spending.
Like others, the IT industry faced lower sales, cost cutting and job losses.
Thankfully, it appears the global economy is heading out of recession, which
should present positive news for the IT industry as a whole.
Previous downturns have shown that the economy and enterprise IT spending is
closely linked, so we now eagerly await a positive upswing in spend across the
sector.
What does 2010 hold for the technology Industry?
Time will tell but there are some strong indicators that point to dominant
products and players in local and international markets. Keep your eye on the
ball, this year will present opportunities for those ready to take them!
This report is a general market overview of IT recruitment trends and topics but
we are happy to discuss any specific situations and queries you may have about
your market sector and geographic location.

Summary
The key recruitment market topics are:

• A positive start to the year with increased job vacancies in the Technology
sector fuelled by a business confidence that IT Managers need to make things
happen this year and to do so requires headcount.
• Employees, relax at your peril! The market may be improving but cost
consolidation and budget reviews continue, whether to upgrade non-
performing staff resources or chase greater team efficiencies.
• How do you want your staff? Fried, scrambled or poached! The games have
begun and nothing is off limits in an attempt to lure away your star
employees.
• The return to confidence for many businesses is forcing employers to ask the
question; “Are my staff engaged or do they have one foot out the door”.
• Will we see a return to the salary creep of pre 2008 as skilled resources
remain in demand and supply languishes? Companies aren’t the only ones
searching to regain losses in personal finance suffered throughout 2009.
Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 2
Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................2 
Summary .......................................................................................................................................2 
Contents ........................................................................................................................................3 
Recruitment Industry News – What’s happening now? .................................................3 
Sigh, kick back and relax – the economy is back in the black......................................3 
Staff are like eggs – How do you like yours? .....................................................................4 
The best pay increase comes with a job move...................................................................5 
Please Sir, can I have some more? .........................................................................................5 
Technology Industry News .......................................................................................................6 
Podcast with an expert series .............................................................................................6 
Technology Blog launched...................................................................................................6 
Industry Sectors ..........................................................................................................................7 
Applications.............................................................................................................................. 7 
Business Information .............................................................................................................8 
Infrastructure ..........................................................................................................................9 
More Information .................................................................................................................... 10 
About Ambition ....................................................................................................................... 10 

Recruitment Industry News – What’s happening now?

Sigh, kick back and relax – the economy is back in the black
Have you ever looked at your growing list of tasks and projects and wondered
how you will ever be able to deliver them on time and to budget? Of course you
have, it’s the dilemma of the modern age from parent at home with the kids to
the boardroom executive. The pressures of modern working life have created an
imbalance between the results sought and the resources available to achieve
them.

Last year many organisations had one priority and that was survival. To achieve
this goal they used a multitude of strategies which invariably included reducing
the resources they had on hand to perform their business function. Fast
forward to a happier economic climate with at the very least a visibility greater
than the length of your arm and suddenly we’re trying to reproduce the results
Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 3
of our pre-2009 performance; we’re trying to recapture some of our lost market
share and we’re trying to rebuild those profit statements. This however requires
a refocus on the staffing and resource levels we have in our business to achieve
these objectives and for many there is quite simply a significant deficit.

Employers need to take the time at the start of this year to ensure that they
fully understand the resource needs of their teams against the expected outputs,
and then put appropriate and considered staff resourcing plans in place to get
the people they need. Already we are seeing a degree of panic in the hiring
expectations of employers as they scramble to ensure they don’t miss the
opportunity to capitalise on our recovering fortunes.

Remember, failing to prepare is preparing to fail!

Staff are like eggs – How do you like yours?

I’ll start with a question I often hear, “Is it ethical to poach staff?”
You want to know the answer most often cited by people engaging in the
practice, “Who cares!”
The reality is that poaching or soliciting staff from an organisation to join your
own is a practice carried on by practically everyone, just with a little less or
more transparency (or gall) depending on the individual or the industry sector.
If you consider networking a professional approach to building relationships
then at what point does it become unethical to offer that person a position in
your business?
Whether you actively watch the market and target high calibre individuals or
simply follow up with referrals, the potential gains are great. You get to weaken
a competitor whilst at the same time strengthening your own business. Add to
the mix professional recruiters who are specifically trained to sell an opportunity
and you might think your staff are going to fly out the door but there are
strategies you can employ to limit the risk you face of losing your best assets.

Staff engagement in an open and honest manner is the key to retention. Talk to
them about poaching and ask for their commitment that they will always give
you the opportunity to put your best case forward if they are considering
leaving. Believe it or not, there are often simply changes you can make which
will persuade an employee to stay in their current role for at least another three
to six months. That may not sound like a long time but its long enough to plan
your contingency and limit any potential risks if or when they leave.

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 4

The best pay increase comes with a job move
At the same time as staff poaching may occur there is a very real scenario of
staff just deciding the grass may be greener. We’ve all heard the talk about
2010 being the year for huge staff attrition as people who were unable to move
in 2009, decide now is the time for a career move. Well the same strategies
apply here as they do for poaching and its honest and open communication. If
you don’t know whether there is a problem with your people then you don’t
have an opportunity to fix it.

We’ve seen an increase in the proportion of people in the Technology market so

far this year who already have identified themselves as open to looking for a
change, who know you may be reading this and feel the same way too. A word
of advice, don’t underestimate the value of being with an organisation for a
period of time both in terms of knowledge acquired and respect gained. Now
that said, if it’s time to go then it’s time to go but do the professional thing and
speak to your employer first before signing that new contract, you just never
know what plans they may have for you if they know you want something
more!

Please Sir, can I have some more?

The expected return to prosperity for corporate Australia is not limited to the c-
suite, and employees at all levels are dusting off calendars and employment
contracts to see when they got that last pay increase and just how much was it?

The Technology Industry held up better than some of the other sectors last year
and coupled with our persistent supply and demand imbalance of skilled
workers, the questions are being asked about salary increases. So how do you
deal with the risk of losing staff to offers of more pay, whilst balancing the very
real budgetary constraints every present?

The focus once again shifts to smart hiring managers conducting regular reviews
of their teams and the total compensation and benefits packages on offer.
There is a significant push for projects shelved in 2009 to be restarted and with
this a demand for resources. Already we are finding employees receiving
multiple offers of employment and with those come the risk of entering a
bidding war to ensure they join you. Perhaps ironically, the most competitive
when it comes to salary packages remain the financial services institutions but
even they are wary of pushing salary increases above the sense of current
comfort in the market.

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 5

So whether its salaries on offer for a new position or benchmarking your
existing staff salaries against the market, ensure you do your research and make
sure you are selling the full benefit of the role and not just the cash dollars.

Technology Industry News

Podcast with an expert series
This month Ambition Technology is pleased to introduce Rob Kliman who talks
about what it takes to effectively manage your IT career and his tips for how to
get ahead.

Rob is responsible for J.P. Morgan’s Worldwide Securities

Services Technology and platforms in Australia and New
Zealand.

Rob has worked within J.P. Morgan Chase for over seven years
and is now based in Sydney providing technology solutions to
the Worldwide Securities Services business. For three years
Rob was based in J.P. Morgan Chase’s London office, where he managed the
relationship between Technology and the Structured Finance businesses for
Europe.

Prior to working with J.P. Morgan, Rob gained a diverse IT experience with
Abbey National Treasury Services, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank,
Nomura Bank, Morgan Stanley and EDS in London, Frankfurt and Zurich.

All together Rob has provided the Financial Services Industry with over 20 years
of service.
Check out Rob’s insightful comments and don’t forget to leave your comments
on the blog page.
Visit Ambition TechBlog: http://www.ambition.com.au/techblog
Technology Blog launched

This month we officially launch our Technology Blog site which over the coming
weeks and months will become home to a collection of interesting Technology
and Careers related posts including our podcast series; market trends reports;
news posts; comments and upcoming events. Its goal is to be informative and
useful and we’d love to see suggestions for future topics to be covered, ideas for
podcast interviewees and requests for market information.

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 6

We invite you to jump on the site, have a look at what’s there and then click on
the link to provide feedback so that we can continue to make this site a one-
stop location for Technology and Careers information.

Visit: http://www.ambition.com.au/techblog

Industry Sectors
Applications

The Application Development space has kicked off the year with a flurry and the
increased demand for project based resources is backed by some positive
financial news. The Computer Economics annual salary study projects that
developers will receive the highest pay raises this year (2.1 percent), which
includes application programmers, data analysts, database administrators,
business analysts, architects and others involved in the development of new
systems and the maintenance of existing systems.

So where is the activity taking place? Well it’s pretty much across the board but
the key spend in these first months is coming from the financial services sector
or the vendor space; who on-sell no surprise, back to those same financial
services institutions.

The big players of Oracle and Microsoft have been squaring up in the global
arena with tit-for-tat stories of success and growth. First Oracle, with its
acquisition of Sun Microsystems complete announced it intends to go after
Microsoft's lucrative Office franchise. Cloud Office will support the Open
Document Format (ODF) and will offer Web-based creation of documents,
spreadsheets and presentations and will link to the Oracle Collaboration Suite.
Microsoft’s response to stay in the news was its announcement of Windows
Azure and SQL Azure cloud services becoming generally available. The launch
represents a key milestone for Microsoft, which has had Azure under
development for several years and released it to its developers for beta testing in
late 2008. Though the platform went through numerous changes over the test
period, Windows Azure and SQL Azure represent Microsoft's official challenge to
Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service, among other rival offerings.

What all this means for the applications space is a drive for more development
work and what that means is opportunity, opportunity, opportunity! Whether at

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 7

an enterprise level or mobile application there are some exciting predictions for
the year ahead.

Check out a blog post from Wayne Liew, an online marketing consultant who
writes of ‘10+1 Mobile Application Development Trends for 2010’.
Business Information

The Business Information space has started with a solid push to regain ground
after 2009. Many projects which never saw the light of day are now back under
review or in many cases, well under way. Demand for skilled business analysts
and project managers are climbing, but still doesn’t offer anywhere near the
amount of jobs which were lost during the previous 18months, despite optimism
that there’s more to come.
The key theme for 2010 is metrics as companies switch their focus from survival
to demonstration of business value. Project Management will become
increasingly important in keeping the business informed about performance and
its impact on the bottom line. A global panel of consultants and senior
executives assembled by ESI identified a list of potential trends for the year
ahead, here are the top five:

1. The implementation of new PPM solutions will soar

Under pressure to demonstrate performance, implementation of project

portfolio management solutions will provide the fact-based decision-making
senior management needs.

2. Senior executives will embrace the value of project and program

governance

To facilitate improved organisational performance, project and program

governance will be embraced from executive management to the project
managers.

3. PMOs will go to the next level with BA centres of excellence

PMOs will use their position of strength as a jumping-off point to establish

business analysis centres of excellence, either within the PMO or alongside it to
further improve project outcomes.

4. Demand for agile project metrics will increase

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 8

With the increased use of Agile project management approaches, management
will demand quality metrics that clearly demonstrate the value of Agile over
other PM

5. Risk Management Will Become a PM Obsession

Emphasis on financial risk management will increase the use of risk assessment
principles to drive performance.
To find out more about ESI, visit their website: http://www.esi-au.com/
Infrastructure

The glue that holds it all together, the IT Infrastructure area of our business has
seen a very healthy start to the year evidenced by the number of open vacancies
we are working on and the number of positions we have successfully filled.
Similar to previous commentary the future is brimming with opportunities for
people with the right skills and of course people who are in the right place at
the right time.

If there’s one thing for sure in today’s technology space, it is that the bandwidth
of wireless networks is being taxed heavily by the rapid increase of data storage.
Only a few short years ago, these networks were almost exclusively used for very
low bandwidth requirements of voice whilst today everyone seeks bandwidth
intensive, media rich capabilities. With the surge in popularity of the iPhone and
the ensuing uptake of smart phones and wireless 3G modems, data has far
surpassed voice as the leading bandwidth user.

With the amount of data in flow, most organisations have had to cobble
together a raft of security appliances all designed to build a layered security
defence. Storage virtualisation projects are on the rise with companies applying
solutions by vendors such as EMC/NetApp & Vmware. The flow on effect is an
increased demand for people with these skill sets and interestingly a move from
traditional Systems Engineer roles to Storage/Virtualisation specialists.

Microsoft Windows 7, Exchange 2010 and System Center Configuration

Manager (SCCM) offer potential upgrade projects for many companies this year
and as these projects grow so too do the help/service desks of many companies
too. Greater levels of internal and external customer satisfaction results in
greater return on investment, so team sizes are growing.

In summary the year ahead looks promising on all fronts. China is only one year
into a four year $42B infrastructure investment and Australia is now preparing

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 9

to invest around $30B; and those are just two examples of what will be a
worldwide multi-hundred billion dollar investment over the next few years.

More Information
For answers to your questions on market trends, salaries, retrenchments or
grading please feel free to contact Ambition with the contact information listed
on the back page or visit www.ambition.com.au

About Ambition
Through a network of national offices we are able to recruit IT professionals
from junior support staff through to senior executives. Our consultants are
experienced recruiters who have strong technology industry exposure and who
focus on both the contract and permanent recruitment markets.

This report was written by:

Andy Cross
andrew.cross@ambition.com.au
Managing Director
Ambition Technology
http://www.ambition.com.au/

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 10

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