Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget.pdf

Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget an IT Management eBook contents] [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget This content was adapted from Internet.com's Datamation, InternetNews, Enterprise IT Planet, and eSecurity Planet Web sites. Contributors: Katherine Spencer-Lee, Lyne Bourque, Joshua Greenbaum, Jennifer Zaino, and Steve Andriole. 2 2 4 IT Outlook: Less Confidence, But Plenty of Opportunities Jennifer Zaino How the Recession Affects IT Spending By Steve Andriole 4 6 6 8 Which IT Sectors Will Weather A Financial Storm? Andy Patrizio The Recession-Proof Enterprise Software Market: It's Not 2002 Joshua Greenbaum 8 11 11 14 17 IT Belt Tightening? Don't Let Security Suffer By Lyne Bourque Hot Jobs in IT for 2008 Katherine Spencer Lee Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. 1 [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] IT Outlook: Less Confidence, But Plenty of Opportunities By Jennifer Zaino E arly in 2008, IT pros may have a little less confidence in their prospects and the economy at large — but it’s not time to panic, yet. Consider, for example, the results of staffing firm Spherion’s monthly Employee Confidence Index. The Index showed that confidence among all workers — IT and nonIT — dropped to its lowest level in November 2007, decreasing 3.5 points to 52.9. The Index measures workers' confidence in their personal employment situation and optimism in the macroeconomic environment. While slightly more workers believed they’d keep their jobs over the next 12 months than thought so in October, fewer workers: • Across all sectors believed the economy was getting stronger than in the previous month • Believed that more jobs are available than in the previous month, and • Reported being confident in their own ability to find a new job. And IT employees seem to feel these concerns more than most when you consider the results on a quarterly basis, says Spherion regional vice president Sean Ebner. From Q2 to Q3, the Employee Confidence Index for IT fell while the Index for all jobs increased modestly, he says. “The IT industry has been pretty resilient to most economic downturns because of global expansions, but people are starting to feel that with the softening of the economy, that that may have an immediate impact in the IT area,” says Ebner. While Ebner says he’s not seeing that himself, IT professionals may be comparing today’s conditions to the last time the economy went through a recession, and mentally and financially preparing themselves for the possibility of down times ahead. Jupiterimages “When the economy went through a recession last time, it hit IT fast and it hit IT hard,” he says. “So people are a little bit skittish about the coming softening in the markets.” IT professionals may be comparing today’s conditions to the last time the economy went through a recession 2 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. “ ” [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] Fears may be fueled by the fact that in the credit and mortgage services industry, for example, where IT is heavily used, there already have been cost restructurings that have led to workforce reduction in many IT departments. “And the tendency is to cut farther than you think you need to go, because you don’t want to have to do it twice,” he says. “It should not be a challenge to find a good job if you are good and you have marketable skills,” he says. “There are more good jobs out there than good technical people.” He sees opportunities for IT pros in nearly every space outside of big iron, from business analysis, to ERP modification and integration, to portal technologies, business intelligence, and data mining. And according to Lee, IT professionals in certain specialties — particularly applications and Web development, database management, systems analysis and network administration — are often receiving multiple job offers with employers bidding competitively for their services. In addition to raising base pay significantly, employers are more commonly offering performance bonuses and enhancing their benefits packages to secure promising candidates, she says. “Technology changes rapidly, making it crucial for IT professionals to constantly learn new skills to keep pace with industry advancements and remain marketable,” Lee says. That includes both technology and business skills. “Managers also are emphasizing the importance of business and soft skills as they relate to technology. With IT now integrated into all other aspects of a company’s operations, the demand for IT professionals who are able to tie a firm’s technical capabilities to its business needs is strong," Lee says. "Employers are willing to pay competitive rates to recruit and retain those who can communicate effectively with people outside the computer world, are familiar with the unique needs of various end-users — both within and outside the organization — and are able to use technology to solve business challenges.” I Overall Picture Optimistic Meanwhile, IT staffing provider Robert Half Technology saw its IT Hiring Index, based on interviews with more than 1,400 CIOs from U.S. companies with 100 or more employees, down two points from the third to fourth quarter of 2007. Thirteen percent of CIOs planned to add IT staff and three percent anticipated personnel reductions in the first quarter of 2008. The net 10 percent hiring increase compared with a net 12 percent increase projected for Q3 2007, according to the firm. But even if CIO hiring plans are a bit down, that doesn’t mean it’s time to count IT out, the firm cautions. “This isn’t enough to fully indicate a trend,” says Robert Half Technology Executive Director Katherine Spencer Lee. “The IT Hiring Index results over the past year were as strong as any we’ve seen in five years or more, and the current results might be a dip, but overall, the outlook for the industry is positive. CIOs appear optimistic about sustainable hiring increases in the industry, as there is still a shortage of highly skilled candidates in a lot of specialties. As the unemployment rate in the United States remains low, and the baby boomer generation nears retirement, companies are struggling to find skilled workers to fill existing and newly created roles.” Ebner agrees that it’s still a great time to be in IT. 3 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] How the Recession Affects IT Spending By Steve Andriole e're in a recession. Our currency is struggling. Inflation is back. Companies are worried. So what should we tell our bankers -– the ones who control the IT budgets? The KISS principle -– keep it simple, stupid -– seems to always apply, but in the current environment it's even more relevant. In a recent lunch with a senior (non-technology) executive, he challenged me with a simple challenge: "What's in it for me?" "Simple," I said, "I can help you save money and make money with technology." As soon as I said it, I wished I had only offered one or the other -– not both. So as the conversation evolved, I changed the message a bit to "I can help you save money or make money." Promising both outcomes is suicidal. Then we discussed technology trends. "What about hardware?" he asked. I told him that price/performance ratios are more favorable than ever and that new technologies like virtualization –- which I had to explain a little -– can extend hardware (and software) capabilities pretty easily and cost-effec- W tively. Translation: hardware is cheaper -– I can save money with hardware. But when we discussed the prospects for thin clients and the potential cost savings with their deployment, he went wild. Seems that he's always hated "fat clients" – though never called them such -– and always suspected that way too much money has been spent on the care and feeding of PCs. It's safe to say that at that point in the conversation I had his attention. We discussed networking trends and how in the not too distant future corporate land lines may well disappear yielding to wireless communications of all kinds. "You mean I can kill all those land lines?" Yes, I said. And what did he hear: less money. The discussion about data was more about how to make money with technology. I explained that up-selling and cross-selling were essentially data-driven business models that required some investments in things like master data management -– but that after these investments the potential for revenue generation was Jupiterimages The KISS principle -– keep it simple, stupid -– seems to always apply, but in the current environment it's even more relevant. “ ” 4 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] substantial. He liked that -– and asked what his company was doing to make up-selling and cross-selling possible. When I told him that he might be able to replace Microsoft Office with an open source alternative -– to liberate his company from whopping annual enterprise software licensing fees -– he got even more excited. He demanded the list of open source alternatives to the proprietary stuff he's been buying for decades. I was leery of even bringing up software-as-a-service (SaaS) but thought, what the hell, how many times do I get to talk to this guy about technology? I was worried that the he might have a coronary when I explained how he could rent software (and hardware) instead of going down a multi-year implementation/deployment/ support cycle. The idea that he could rent just about everything got him thinking about whether or not he should even be in the technology business. "So why I am spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year on technology?" he asked. I answered him with a question: "Is technology one of your core competencies –- and, even if it is today, do you want it to be tomorrow?" This got him thinking. Maybe he should re-think his internal commitment to IT. Re-thinking is the key here. As things get tighter and expectations about the business value of IT increase, arguments for technology spending need to simplify around some core messages. Save-money-or-makemoney is the argument, nothing more, nothing less. If you can shift the discussion to one or the other or -– in a perfect world -– both outcomes, you will get the as much attention as you want. Then all you have to do is deliver. I 5 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] Which IT Sectors Will Weather A Financial Storm? By Andy Patrizio ith the status of the U.S. economy surrounded by question marks, what will be the impact of a recession, or at least a severe slowdown, on IT spending and budgets? That was one of the questions addressed at the IDC Directions '08 conference in early March. Stephen Minton, vice president of worldwide IT markets, discussed the possible scenarios facing IT in 2008 and compared it to the last major economic slowdown in 2001 and 2002. Back then, the U.S. was hit with a double-whammy. First came the Dot Bomb implosion that led to a surplus of office space and slightly used server equipment and a shortage of moving trucks in the San Francisco Bay Area. Then came the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which made an already tough situation much worse. In the current scenario, however, there are two significant differences. The terrorism scenario was never brought up and not factored into the equation, and in W this instance, the slowdown isn't being driven by a bunch of overvalued tech startups but overextended consumers who bought houses they couldn't afford. "This downturn is very different than 2001, which really was a business-led recession," Minton said. "That's one reason why [the tech sector's situation] was as bad as it was. What we're looking at now is one primary industry: financial services." Unfortunately, that's also a big sector; it makes up 18 percent of the U.S. economy and buys a lot of computing equipment, software, and services, and there could be spillover. For Jupiterimages instance, he cited weakness in retail, particularly highend retail. The Sharper Image, a chain that sells all kinds of expensive gadgetry, recently entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and will close half its stores. The other reason this is different from 2001 is it is a consumer-led recession mostly affecting bad housing markets in some states, which has no direct impact on The slowdown isn't being driven by a bunch of overvalued tech startups but overextended consumers who bought houses they couldn't afford. “ ” 6 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] a Fortune 1000 firm buying new servers, for example. "So a lot of the business IT market is relatively immune to the direct impact of a slowdown of consumer spending," said Minton, although given Intel's recent quarterly warning concerning weakness in flash memory, that's not an absolute situation. IDC has lowered its forecasts for IT spending in the U.S. and western Europe based on what they have seen in the decline of economic indicators, but they aren't seeing spending go negative over the prior year like in 2002, when PC spending was 20 percent less than the prior year. IDC forecasts around four percent growth in IT spending budgets in 2008, half of the eight percent growth in 2007. IT managers are more bearish about their ability to fund projects and are either slowing or delaying certain projects, Minton said. However, the rest of the world is doing fine. The four BRIC nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China – are expected to increase IT spending between 10 and 20 percent this year. CIOs that IDC has spoken with say they are working with multiple budgets to cover a variety of scenarios, and many are re-evaluating their spending on a perquarter basis. "This means things could go up if the economy proves more resilient, but things could also go down," Minton said. The hardware most likely to be affected by a reduction in spending, not surprisingly, is PCs, followed by mobile devices -- smart phones in particular. Storage is least likely to be cut, followed by networking hardware. Software reductions are also anticipated, but at a much slower rate than hardware. Office and operating systems are most likely to get the chop (bad news for Microsoft), while security and compliance software is least likely to be cut. Virtualization isn't being cut back at all. It remains a strong priority and represents a theme Minton noticed: CIOs are trying to protect data center projects. Endpoints can be allowed to lag but the servers are the last place where cuts are being seen. I 7 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] The Recession-Proof Enterprise Software Market: It’s Not 2002 By Joshua Greenbaum T he last time we had a major slump in tech spending was way back in 2002. It was an interesting year to be in the enterprise software market, as report after report showed that IT managers were holding back on technology spending, and thereby punishing an industry that had already seen a large chunk of its market -– in the form of dotcom, e-business companies -– simply disappear. It was all doom and gloom, all the time. Ah, those were the days… of deeply flawed analysis that failed to see the subtleties at work in what was a major shift in IT spending and software utilization. Rather than doom and gloom, the trends of 2002 heralded the beginning of a new boom in enterprise software, one that today promises to keep much of the enterprise software market largely immune to the current economic crisis. And as long as things stay screwed up the way they currently are -– with bad loans, poorly regulated financial practices, and rogue trading à la Société Générale leading the markets' current malaise –- the chances are actually quite good that enterprise software will emerge from 2008 with real growth. Here's what was really happening in 2002. Don’t get me wrong, we were definitely in a recession, and general market growth, wages, unemployment, and other factors were strongly in favor of that conclusion. But the enterprise software market actually had a very different set of problems on hand: a run-up in spending for Y2K and dotcom business models that left companies flush with largely unused software and not enough business coming in to justify buying more. This software bloat was all over the place. Companies had bought thousands of seats of CRM, SCM, procurement, e-commerce, and other products in the fervent hope that software buying alone would help them remain competitive in case -– and this was really an "in case" moment -– one or more of the current market fads would turn out to be the key competitive differentiator that would propel them into the brave new dotcom, e-business world. Jupiterimages Rather than doom and gloom, the trends of 2002 heralded the beginning of a new boom in enterprise software “ ” 8 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget This spending on applications had followed fast upon a huge surge in infrastructure spending to ward off the other fantasy of the fin de siècle: the so-called Y2K bug. In a similar way, Y2K-driven spending produced an infrastructure glut that left many companies with a severe case of software indigestion as the recession hove into view. The irony of this software surplus is that, pretty much simultaneously, vendor claims that enterprise software was a net, and measurable, contributor to overall productivity were starting to be recognized as fact, and not just wishful thinking. Alan Greenspan started the ball rolling in 1999 with the almost startling observation that technology spending correlated with overall productivity. As the new century got under way, more and more evidence that IT spending could drive greater productivity was emerging from all sectors of the economy. Which brings about the other reason why the doomsayers of 2002 were missing the mark. The recognition that IT increased productivity heralded the start of a significant shift in high-tech buying patterns, particularly when it came to enterprise software. A new buyer emerged, the line-of-business buyer, for whom software was a means to drive direct revenue growth and competitive advantage. These buyers started showing up in droves, opening up new revenue sources and new opportunities for a software market that had traditionally sold much larger, and admittedly very bloated software projects, to big budget IT managers. So while survey after survey showed that IT spending was hitting a wall, it was clear that the surveys were asking the wrong buyers –- CIOs and IT managers, whose budgets were pegged to overall financial performance and for whom the recession meant a genuine cut in spending. But if anyone had bothered to ask the line-of-business managers, they would have found that these buyers were waking up to the fact that strategic application deployment could have a significant impact on bottom and top line revenue, and they were starting to buy and buy and buy. So, let's bring this analysis up to the present, and see how it all compares. Unlike 2002, there is no similar software glut in either applications or infrastructure. Au contraire –- companies have been cautious in introducing new infrastructure in recent years, and as far as I can 9 Cisco: 'We're Talking Ourselves Into This Slowdown' uarter after quarter, year after year, Cisco Systems has been a bellwether for the IT industry. So when the networking giant sees trouble ahead, people take notice. During Cisco's earnings call in February for its second fiscal quarter, CEO John Chambers announced solid results. However, the news was tempered by his warning that the company is seeing signs of a slowdown in its business. For the quarter ending Jan. 26, Cisco said net income totaled $2.1 billion ($0.33 per share), a year-over-year gain of 7.2 percent compared to the same quarter last year. The networking vendor's net sales also rose to $9.8 billion, an increase of 16.5 percent over the second quarter of 2007. While those numbers looked rosy, Chambers grew cautious when providing guidance for the next quarter, thanks to what he described as a slowdown in sales during January. As a result, the company lowered its sales growth expectations to only 10 percent for the coming quarter. Chambers said Cisco is sticking with its long-term growth target of 12 to 17 percent, however. What's to blame for the showdown? To Chambers, it's largely self-fulfilling: the fault of businesses believing hype about a slowdown. Consequently, he said customers are taking a cautious approach as reports of a souring economy continue to dominate the media. That pessimism is causing lengthier sales cycles for Cisco, he said, with approvals taking longer than previously. It's fundamentally a matter of confidence among businesses as to where the economy is going, he added. "When you really talk about our numbers, part of what we are building into this is we do think there is a very cautious attitude in the boardroom and that's different than six months ago," Chambers said. "We do think that people tend to hesitate and maybe put people through more hur- ] Q By Sean Michael Kerner Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] tell, most are planning to continue long-term upgrade projects that will easily take them through 2008. Point No. 1: There's still a lot of infrastructure -– as in enterprise services and the like -– to sell, even if the overall economy starts slumping. Reinforcing point No. 1 is the fact that those line-of-business buyers haven’t lost the mandate to buy software that can improve the top and bottom line. Which brings us to point No. 2: There's still a healthy demand for innovative applications. If software expenditures can be justified with respect to improving revenues or lowering costs, the green light is still on. Surely, sectors like financial services and retail may be in for a serious slow-down, but by and large line-ofbusiness buyers realize that, even if things do slow down, enterprise software can increase productivity, improve competitive advantage, and otherwise have a positive ROI and positive net effect on the business. Finally, there's point No. 3. So far, despite the very negative news that seems to arrive every day, what's happening in the credit and financial markets is nothing compared to the meltdown when the dotcom bubble burst. Let's remember those heady days of disintermediation and e-commerce: that bubble was all encompassing, with the entire economy, including many, many ma-and-pa investors, playing the stock market like hedge fund managers. When the bubble burst, everyone got dinged, or worse. Now, while every investor is getting dinged by the fallout from the falling market, the big losers are, very unfortunately, a lot of people who were sold mortgages they never should have bought, and, much less unfortunately, some very wealthy individuals and institutions who bought the securities built on this sub-prime mortgage house of cards. When you see companies like SocGen roiling a big European exchange because of a rogue trader, it's actually a relief to know that the whole business model of the Western economy isn't being challenged by a reality check that was long in coming. That's the difference between then and now –- the fundamentals are still fundamentally strong, and an entire population of investors hasn't drunk the Kool-Aid from the sub-prime mortgage mess. And that's why point No. 3 is so important, and why a 10 dles to get approval, more signatures, and a little bit tighter return expectations until they figure out, 'How does this look?'" Overall, however, Chambers said he expects the slowdown will be temporary and will not have long-term implications for Cisco's business. Additionally, he noted that Cisco historically tends to thrive during market slowdowns and he doesn't expect the present to prove an exception. Chambers added that Cisco's core switching business experienced a solid second quarter, but he did admit that the company would probably see it become more challenging as the year progresses. On the positive side, Chambers said he remains optimistic about Cisco's key service provider segment, which is fueling a good portion of its continuing growth. Just after the quarter ended, Cisco announced its biggest switching platform evolution in a decade with the Nexus 7000. Another key part of Cisco's future will be in collaboration and Web 2.0 technologies. The company made a number of aggressive moves in 2007 in the space, including the acquisition of WebEx for $3.2 billion. "Collaboration enabled by the network Web 2.0 technologies will, in our opinion, transform business models with a speed we have not seen in over a decade," Chambers said. "It is our intent to not only lead, in terms of thought leadership when applying these technologies, but to be the best example of how this can drive productivity and a number of cross-functional opportunities a company can focus on at any point in time." I lot of strong tech companies turned in strong fourth quarters in 2007. There's still a lot of strength in the economy, and still a lot of reasons why businesses won't just disappear they way they did in the last recession. So, take a breath and think of 2002, and then be glad it's 2008. Enterprise software is still a strong bet for buyer and investor alike. And will continue to be so, despite the chaos in the rest of the economy. See you at the upturn. I Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] IT Belt Tightening? Don't Let Security Suffer By Lyne Bourque s the year trudges forward and the ominous threat of recession looms, thoughts of implementing and enhancing security seem moot. As often happens, security is viewed as a cost center, even more so during times of financial belt tightening. But is now really the time? This is the time to implement security or add those final pieces of the puzzle that have been missing from your environment. While it may seem daunting at first, corporations are continually weaving security into their environments pieces, particularly now that security software makers have made it easier to integrate those products. But more money for antieverything and the security appliances just isn't in the cards. Then consider better and more consistent security practices and procedures. While it is still a cost center for a company, it is an easier one to swallow. And these practices will help save your organization from the jaws of pesky online threats no matter how little technology you have to throw at them. A What pests am I talking about? Let's explore... Spam = Wasted Bandwidth Of the major security issues and annoyances that plague businesses today, one of the biggest is spam. Spam, depending on whom you ask, accounts for about 70 to 90 percent of all e-mail. Regardless of the amount, it still remains an undisputed bandwidth waster. Further, this spam often includes links to questionable sites that employees may think are legitimate, and can, when clicked on or visited, inadvertently invite malware into the corporate environment. Quite a number of good tools exist to tackle spam at Jupiterimages the end-user level, or even at the portal of a corporate network. However, there often needs to be better controls at the internetwork level to prevent the wasted bandwidth. But the sad truth is that unlike many sneakier threats to security, spam is usually easily identifiable. Seriously, how many pills does one need to enlarge various body parts? This is the time to implement security or add those final pieces of the puzzle that have been missing from your environment. “ ” 11 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] Here is where the "it's not my problem" mindset rears its ugly head. Since the internetworks of the Internet are shared between major ISPs, it is everyone's problem and no one organization can convince them to work together to eliminate this. How about some cooperation then? One thing that might help is to require consumer ISPs to freeze Internet access for those where it's determined that someone is sending spam and/or viruses. This can help reduce or eliminate the source of most of the spam. Certainly, some providers ensure that all mail relayed to a user is checked for malware before it hits the inbox, but the effect of this has yet to be seen and my not be quantifiable for a few years. The Tiny But Mighty Cell Phone Another area that will require some thought from your security crew is the ubiquitous cell phone. Today, cell phones do much more than place phone calls. Our phones perform the role of PDA, computer, e-mail program and a variety of other tasks that have traditionally been the realm of laptops and desktops. The challenge is to start providing phones with protective mechanisms since malware coders are undeniably casting an eye toward these go-anywhere devices. Imagine the damage to your network if infected phones and PDAs that run mobile operating systems like Windows Mobile 6, Blackberry, and various Another challenge that The biggest challenge for mini-*nixes have a "chat" remains today is the set of with a host. The fallout can vast e-mail lists that are virtualization developers is how even spread beyond the circulating among spamto include standard security cell phone to other mers. To this day, one devices that have comspecific e-mail account practices into their underlying mon, built-in OS-bases like that I have used for over infrastructure. Windows-based hardware 10 years receives spam eappliances that are ubiquimail regularly, enough for tous within some large me to finally disable it for networks. While employthe time being to see if it ing these systems becomes easier due to an existing will settle down the volume to a dull roar. familiarity, it does make them susceptible to many of the same viruses, Trojans and other nasties that infect No Thanks for All the Phish regular Windows systems. Related to spam is my long-standing pet peeve: phishing. Sleep with a Virtual Eye Open “ ” It's interesting to note that the Anti-Phishing Workgroup has indicated a bit of leveling out in regards to phishing attack activity, although September 2007 did show a record high of 38,514 phishing emails. Attackers are also getting a little savvier and realizing that they cannot continually assume the same major corporate identities. I do recall receiving such phishing e-mails for Canadian banks such as Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal -- unusual since prior to that my inbox was assaulted by fake versions of WaMu, CitiGroup and an assortment of larger U.S. banks. As their popularity grows, virtualized infrastructures will become a tempting target. The same mechanisms that were used to protect their physical equivalents should also be used to protect these. The biggest challenge for virtualization developers is how to include standard security practices into their underlying infrastructure. Part of this lies in the balance between hypervisors and hosted virtualized products. So far, most hypervisors have been free of major security issues, but it is only a matter of time before vulnerabilities surface. As virtualization becomes more prolific - or dare we dream, the norm -- we will begin to see more attempts to break the hypervisor. 12 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] The situation is compounded for hosted virtualization products. They not only have to deal with security for the virtualization platform, but also for the inherent issues of the host operating system. This is an area that needs to be better addressed by all virtualization vendors. "wow" factor. It is often the simplest attacks -- not Hollywood-envisioned hacker footwork -- that punch holes in your network. In the eight years that I've been involved in computer and network security, the most effective way to ensure a safe environment is to change the way the individuals think about security and incorporate it into their day-today activities. Perhaps we don't need to focus entirely on shiny, fancy appliances, and software. Instead, this is an opportunity to solidify the foundations our IT environments and make them resistant to the whims of the bears and bulls on Wall Street. I Vigilance Costs Little So don't fear dwindling IT budgets. You may discover that there is little need to spend more for newer, better protection. However, it pays to be persistently vigilant for triedand-true problems, not just the ones that pack the 13 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] Hot Jobs in IT for 2008 By Katherine Spencer Lee lthough no one can know for certain how the economy will affect the overall hiring market, continued business growth in some sectors, combined with ever-growing reliance on the IT department to provide a competitive advantage, has prompted many firms to increase IT hiring activity. At the same time, unemployment is still historically low for collegeeducated professionals, making it challenging to find qualified employees who have established track records in the IT industry. Many employers are responding to this situation by increasing compensation levels to attract candidates. According to the Robert Half Technology 2008 Salary Guide, average starting salaries for the IT industry will rise 5.3 percent in 2008. Positions facing talent shortages will see even larger gains. They include: • Lead applications developer. This role is forecast to have the largest increase in starting salary of any position we surveyed. Base compensation is expected to rise 7.6 percent this year to between $80,250 and A $108,000 annually. Demand is growing for skilled professionals with experience developing applications for the desktop, the Internet and myriad mobile devices. Lead applications developers are master coordinators, guiding a team in the design, development, coding, testing, and debugging of applications. •Messaging administrator. Messaging administrators also will see solid gains in starting salaries in 2008 as companies recognize the need to keep their employees, customers, and clients connected. Base compensation is forecast in the range of $55,000 to $77,750 per year -- a 7.1 percent increase over 2007. These employees are the air traffic controllers of the IT world. They coordinate all communication through messaging systems, Jupiterimages making sure that e-mail applications, handheld devices and corporate networks function seamlessly, and deliver information quickly and accurately. Unemployment is still historically low for college-educated professionals, making it challenging to find qualified employees who have established track records in the IT industry. “ ” 14 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp. [ Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget ] •Data modeler. Companies are devoting greater resources to maintaining and upgrading their database systems, creating a need for additional database professionals. Data modelers structure and organize data and address data-quality issues. Their starting salaries are forecast to climb 7 percent to between $74,250 and $102,000 per year. •IT auditor. Auditing professionals also will see notable gains in base compensation in 2008. Starting salaries for senior IT auditors are expected to increase 6.9 percent, to between $86,750 and $114,750 annually, while IT auditors will see a 6.3 percent increase, to the range of $74,000 to $102,750. IT auditors help firms ensure they're in compliance with regulations and industry standards for efficiency, accuracy and security. These professionals test and evaluate IT systems and controls, and make recommendations for improvements. •Help desk. As technology investments grow, there's a corresponding rise in the demand for personnel who can support products purchased. Help desk tier one professionals take initial inquiries and manage simple hardware, software or network problems, while tier two analysts resolve more complex issues, and tier three individuals manage the most difficult challenges that couldn’t be fixed earlier. Starting salaries for help desk tier one are forecast to rise 5.8 percent, to the range of $29,250 to $39,000 annually; tier two is expected to increase 6.5 percent, to between $35,750 and $46,250; and tier three will see a 5.2 percent gain, to the range of $44,750 to $57,250. I This content was adapted from Internet.com's Datamation, InternetNews, Enterprise IT Planet, and eSecurity Planet Web sites. Contributors: Katherine Spencer-Lee, Lyne Bourque, Joshua Greenbaum, Jennifer Zaino, and Steve Andriole. 15 Guide to Surviving on a Tight Budget, an Internet.com IT Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.