Mind The It Skills Gap

By Author: sadie hawkins
Total Articles: 18
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A recent article by IT professionals highlights their fear for the UK's digital future. In this article they discussed the findings of a survey looking at the digital skills gap that is growing in the UK and Europe.

Over the next few years alone, the UK is expected to develop a skills gap, what this will essentially mean is that 100,000 IT jobs cannot be filled. Tacking these alarming statistics into account, many survey respondents feel are being driven by the recent outsourcing of IT services to offshore companies, this in turn results in there being less opportunities available for IT professionals at home.

The main question you need to consider is how is your business preparing to manage the shortage?

One of the options available to your business is trying to find and grow your existing IT department. The other option is to consider a managed IT service company. There are a range of IT service companies on the market that feature fully-accredited professional support staff that complete regular development programmes to ensure that they are up-to-date with the latest technologies.

With a large ...
... number of UK-based staff supporting over 500 businesses nationwide, they also regularly offer new job opportunities to UK professionals. With an established network of trusted partners this means they can also support businesses with overseas operations too. As well as having their own in-house support staff, these companies have access to an even wider network of qualified and experienced professionals that can make sure your business doesn’t suffer from the skills gap. Other things to consider are the recent rise of virtualisation.

In preparation for a tough year, 87% of CFOs interviewed in a recent survey stated that they will be allocating less of their budgets to new IT investments. While this may in the short-term look good for the bottom line, a long-term investment in IT Managed Services could help your business do more for less with your budget this year, and well into the future.

Virtualisation of desktops and servers, combined with a shared services contract, can give your business access to the latest technologies and fully-accredited support professionals while also cutting costs. For example a managed it services company has recently worked on a virtualisation project with BaxterStorey and the time and cost efficiencies delivered through it mean that despite the continued growth of their business, they have not had to increase the size of their IT department in four years.

With managed IT services businesses can benefit from access to qualified and professional support staff and the latest IT solutions without having to have large capital investments. Whilst at the same time freeing up internal resource to work on more strategic value-adding projects, the utilising managed it services is delivering millions of pounds of savings for businesses across the UK and providing them with additional, expert resources. This is something that it looks like many businesses will need in 2014 with such high numbers of IT professionals on the lookout for a new role and the growing gap is skilled IT professionals.

Help manage and maintain all of your It services with a managed IT services from Selection IT.