The Past, The Future and Everything
in Between.

Our consultants and clients express their
thoughts in this special "End of Century" issue.

   The information technology industry is like no other in modern times. The key word: Change. The timeline: Now. What was it yesterday? The same. What will it be tomorrow? More of the same. That's a broad summary of what you'll read from major players on each side of the many projects we've been a part of in 1999.critical skillsaddressed these three questions: "Is your company Y2K ready and what did you do to get there?", "What do you see different about staffing trends going into the new millennium?" and, "What do you see as the most criticalskills needed and most pressing IT job to get done in the next 2 years?" On the consultant side, we interviewed a broad range of IT professionals to make sure that a single skill set wasn't weighing responses in any one direction. Their 3 questions were: "If you worked on a Y2K project, share any surprises, glitches or unresolved issues that you think might be interesting to share or worth watching at the stroke of midnight.", "After the smoke clears about Y2K, what new skills do you think will rise to the 'must have' ranks?", and "What's the next Y2K-like opportunity over the horizon?". We hope you enjoy this thoughtful issue of ITJ. If you'd like to share your thoughts for a future issue of Consultimes, we welcome the input. Simply e-mail editor@itjournal.com.

Strategic Thinking Skills Crucial for Success.

An Oracle DBA offers this insight:
"Those who can understand the long-term effects of program changes, hardware selection, and systems direction will be the ones who succeed."

(further) "IT professionals must think strategically, or futuristically, on two planes. First, if I were hiring, I would want someone who could critically think about the direction of IT technologies. There are really very few people who can look at the world around them and make long-range decisions concerning IT strategy. Next, I would want someone who can critically think about their arena of IT technology. For example, if I hire a programmer, I want one who can envision what consequences might occur if a change is made in the code of a particular program. If I hire a network administrator, I want one who can strategically make purchases, decisions, etc. about the network that will support company growth. I'm afraid we get so busy with the business of IT, that we forget that decisions today will determine our direction and our outlook for tomorrow."

Clients share views on future skills needed.

• "Networking Engineer will be in the highest demand, people that can make it all "talk" to each other. Soon all of our houses will be connected, in ways we are not even thinking about today. More commerce will be happening from the home. Those folks will be it for the next 10 years or so."
• "I believe there is a lot of pent up demand for software development projects that were put on hold during Y2K work."
• "To me it's clear and simple: Web based development."
• "Business analysts, project managers. All these new companies will need to put in traditional data processing systems to do accounting, sales, etc. The interface may be internet but the core business practices are the same - ya know, debits by the window, credits by the door, etc."
• "For us it's transaction scalability first. We're going to need to ramp up fast and this requires strong architecture planning at every level -- application design, database design, hardware design, network design. All these elements have to be thought through very carefully. It must be done as a team and it must be done in an environment where major systems need to be built and deployed within a 3 to 6 month timeframe max. Secondly, it's project management. We're installing a company-wide project management methodology which will completely replace our former IT-centric methodology. Now we're placing that discipline into the business as a whole so that there is better alignment and better execution between the business and IT."

Consultant's thoughts about Y2K, from glitches to future issues.

• "I did a Y2K project in a fab and was trying to convince them that they needed to be more concerned with projects there. I fixed their network, but it'll be interesting to see what happens to things that people aren't really paying attention to."
• "I think most of the surprises will be issues that weren't identified during Y2K testing. Every company will have at least a few of them."
• "In addition to not knowing what date a computer will choose after December 31, 1999, we also may not know what day comes after February 28, 2000. My feeling is that the paranoia about Y2K has created a bigger impact than Y2K itself."
• "Third party and proprietary applications will be the glitches of Y2K."

Consultants answer the question about "Must Have" new skills.

• "The best IT opportunities will be in the convergence of voice, data & pictures over the internet. The jobs will require detailed knowledge of communications at the router & hub level, internet development experience and some telephony."
• "The next big desirable (in my opinion) skill set(s) that are going to be hot could be one of two things...an MCDBA certification or knowledge, and Macromedia Shockwave development experience in an internet atmosphere."
• "Networking Technicians and Microsoft Service Professionals seem to be the trend going forward. Being a certified Microsoft Engineer and a Certified Network Engineer is a must in the year 2000, and keeping your certifications current in years to come is the path for a future in the IT field."
• "As far as down the road, I see strong TCP/IP skills as a must and probably some Windows 2000 experience."
• "New skills? I'd say web server applications toolsets (netscape app. server, MS IIS)."

Consultants offer insight about new "Y2K-like" opportunities.

• "I need OO & DBA skills so that I can be involved in the coming Boom Times for Web developers."
• "Keeping a network, LAN or WAN STABLE during a turbulent period of growth and integration."
• "The hot areas will be with large inter/intranet applications. From a commerce side, pushing products and services out to consumers. From an employee/employer relationship side, more self service and responsibility at lower levels (phasing out of a lot of HR/payroll functions and making the employee/manager responsible)."
• "The internet appears to be the center of attention. I believe it will take several years to eliminate the fondness and the industry might find a normal level. I expect the speed of data to increase by about 1,000x in the next couple of years."
• "Connectivity seems to be the hot issue where folks have a need to have access to the world from their desktop. We still have several different platforms out there, so I see the tools and operating systems becoming more seamless. It appears that we are nearing the point in time where this industry will be acknowledged as just a tool to accomplish the greater end instead of the other way around."

Clients offer thoughts regarding staffing trends.

• "I think that training and consistency are going to be two major issues. With the shortage of qualified, technical individuals, staffing companies that provide training are going to move forward. Clients like to see consistency and loyalty in their labor. We will see the number of permanent employees placed increase, too. With the growing numbers in outsourcing, these types of (staffing) companies will be the ones hiring permanent labor (benched consultants) to provide for their clients."
• "I think people are becoming even more transient. Getting people to keep jobs will be the real trick."
• "Starting in the first interview, is looking more for team players. People that want to find a place to belong and contribute and build - to be a part of a team. At this point that is much more important than specific technical skills, we are constantly training our people on the newest technology as it is. Your tech edge slides the worst when you have transient engineers. When you hire people who, as an example, every time they make a mistake, they swap jobs. That will be the death of a lot of companies."
• "I see some flattening of prices because the initial wave of 2000 is over and bodies will be more available. Work will continue to expand due to new tech and Inet companies."
• "Wages are going up. The people with the best skills are getting all the money and those without the latest skills are getting left behind. That's the way it is and the gap is growing."
• "Business process design folks are critical. I need people savvy in business and technology. We have to string together disparate systems to make any process work, and that task is more or less difficult depending upon the caliber of upfront analysis a project gets."

Are companies Y2K ready?

• "Our corporate parent set up a Y2K office to identify needs. We have addressed all software related issues and will spend the remainder of the year contingency planning. The short answer: we're ready."
• "Still doing minor parts. The bulk was started in 1997 and completed in 1998. It involved 3.5 million lines of cobol."
• "All but our non-mission-critical systems are complete at this point in time. Essentially, we just have desktop PC's which will be completed this month."
• "Overall, the effort wasn't too bad (we're a young company). We formed a project team that reported to me and the CFO as sponsors. We inventoried every system and followed it through the remediation process. The project was managed by our QA department and consumed between 2-3 FTE's for much of this year."
• "We're ready. We have a project team looking at all of our systems to make sure they are Y2K compliant. We are testing these systems to make sure they work."