Information Policy: Comparing e-government and e-governance

Information Policy: Comparing e-government and e-governance

Web 3.0, the "official" definition.

Some folks have been asking me for the clear definition of the term Web 3.0.

* Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.

Web 2.0 services are now the commoditized platform, not the final product. In a world where a social network, wiki, or social bookmarking service can be built for free and in an instant, what's next?

Web 2.0 services like digg and YouTube evolve into Web 3.0 services with an additional layer of individual excellence and focus. As an example, funnyordie.com leverages all the standard YouTube Web 2.0 feature sets like syndication and social networking, while adding a layer of talent and trust to them.

A version of digg where experts check the validity of claims, corrected errors, and restated headlines to be more accurate would be the Web 3.0 version. However, I'm not sure if the digg community will embrace that any time soon.

Wikipedia, considered a Web 1.5 service, is experiencing the start of the Web 3.0 movement by locking pages down as they reach completion, and (at least in their German version) requiring edits to flow through trusted experts.

Also of note, is what Web 3.0 leaves behind. Web 3.0 throttles the "wisdom of the crowds" from turning into the "madness of the mobs" we've seen all to often, by balancing it with a respect of experts. Web 3.0 leaves behind the cowardly anonymous contributors and the selfish blackhat SEOs that have polluted and diminished so many communities.

Web 3.0 is a return to what was great about media and technology before Web 2.0: recognizing talent and expertise, the ownership of ones words, and fairness. It's time to evolve, shall we?

[ Note: Make sure you read the update on the unauthorized comments. I also added quotes around official since some folks actually thought that I had the power to lay down the official definition of what our industry will be doing over the next 10 years--really. :-) ]

Кйел Нордстрьом: "Бъдещето е за талантливите" - Eco

Кйел Нордстрьом: "Бъдещето е за талантливите" - Eco: "По време на първото технологично изложение BusIT, организирано от Hewlett Packard у нас, своята презентация „Караоке капитализъм” представи д-р Кйел Нордстрьом. Д-р Нордстрьом е сред десетте най-големи експерти в класацията The 2005 Thinkers 50 в Европа. В своята атрактивна презентация днес д-р Нордстрьом се опита да обясни какв�"

RFID - 2 на практика - Блоговете на Капита

ТЕХНОЛОГИИ | RFID на практика - Блоговете на Капита: "Преди време разказвахме за RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) по-скоро на теория. Ето няколко практически приложения на технологията. RFID банкиране - В Корея можете да изтеглите пари в брой от банкомат, като просто насочите мобилния си телефон към RFID сензор. Заплаща се месечна такса, a над 1 милион корейци се възползват от услугата. О�"

RFID 1 - Мания за проследяване - Блоговете �

ТЕХНОЛОГИИ | Мания за проследяване - Блоговете �: "Комисията за регулиране на съобщенията (КРС) публикува редовно разни доклади. Най-новият е 'Анализ на пощенските услуги за 2006 г.' Хе, кой ли пише писма на хартия, че и с химикалка? Кога за последен път се шокирахте как ви се е развалил почеркът? Но пращане на пратки е друга работа, постоянно хвърчат разни, било"

RFID 1 - Мания за проследяване - Блоговете �

ТЕХНОЛОГИИ | Мания за проследяване - Блоговете �: "Комисията за регулиране на съобщенията (КРС) публикува редовно разни доклади. Най-новият е 'Анализ на пощенските услуги за 2006 г.' Хе, кой ли пише писма на хартия, че и с химикалка? Кога за последен път се шокирахте как ви се е развалил почеркът? Но пращане на пратки е друга работа, постоянно хвърчат разни, било"

Виртуалният свят заплашва ценностите

Виртуалният свят заплашва ценностите: "Растящият брой виртуални светове рискува да навреди на основните човешки ценности, които бихме искали да възпитаме в децата си.

Това заяви производителят на играчки Лорд Путнам по време на пресконференция в Лондон за обсъждане на виртуалните светове. Той изрази опасение, че всички деца ще научат единствено от тези виртуални пространства, че са най-вече потребители. Ветеранът в производството на играчки призова създателите на тези пространства да внесат повече морал в тях, за да могат децата да се учат на ценности, от които обществото има нужда. "

Бесен купон сред руини, или с други думи: Студе�

Бесен купон сред руини, или с други думи: Студе�

» The five best business products at the Web 2.0 Expo | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com

» The five best business products at the Web 2.0 Expo | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com: "I have scoped out what I think were the five best products for businesses at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week. Here they are:

1. Vidoop – The Vidoop authentication engine replaces passwords with a visual image recognition system. It is the biggest innovation in authentication technology in a long time.

2. Egnyte – Sharing Microsoft Office documents usually happens in e-mail and results in tons of inefficiency and wasted disk space. Egnyte provides an effective portal for sharing doc files and spreadsheets. You can view them in a version tree, which allows you to access any of the iterations of the doc or spreadsheet. It's a great innovation for file sharing and archiving, and there's a free version for up to 1 GB of data.

3. Nokia Widgets — Nokia launched a standards-based widget system for its S60 smartphone platform (based on Symbian). This includes the usual widgets you'd expect (news and weather), but the main business benefit is that it could provide an excellent platform for business applications. What really makes it work is the S60 Web browser, which is the most sophisticated and useful browser that I've seen in any phone.

4. G.ho.st — As a Flash-based OS-in-a-browser, G.ho.st can provide businesses with a way to allow users to access their personal mail and data in a sandbox that is separated from their work computer.

5. AppLogic – If you are running an Internet company or a business that demands a farm of public Web servers, then you probably have a colo or a managed services environment. 3Tera's AppLogic provides a virtual data center that is easier to manage than a colo and less expensive than managed services. My favorite aspects of AppLogic are 1.) it lets you build out your data center with a Web-based Visio-like tool, and 2.) you can build redundancy and fault tolerance without wasting hardware

Dnevnik.bg - Доставката на софтуер се третира и като усл

Dnevnik.bg - Доставката на софтуер се третира и като усл: "Новият Закон за ДДС раздели софтуерните продукти на две групи - стандартни и нестандартни продукти. Стандартните са включени в обхвата на понятието "стока" (чл.5, ал.1 от закона), а нестандартните - не. В резултат на това в зависимост от характеристиката на конкретно доставяния продукт доставката се третира като доставка на стока или като доставка на услуга. Разликата в третирането на доставките естествено води до прилагането на различен режим за облагане с ДДС. Квалификацията на продуктите на "стандартни" и "нестандартни" за целите на облагането се извършва в съответствие с дефиницията на понятието "стандартен софтуерен продукт", посочена в §1, т.26 на допълнителните разпоредби (ДР) на ЗДДС. Според нея "стандартен софтуер" е продукт, записан на технически носител, който е предназначен за масова употреба и не отчита спецификите в дейността на конкретния потребител. При доставката на такъв продукт са приложими нормативните разпоредби за облагане на доставките на стока. По силата на обратния прочит на посочената по-горе норма всеки софтуерен продукт, който не отговаря на дефиницията за стандартен, се квалифицира като нестандартен и доставката му се облага като доставка на услуга.�"

"Нискотарифни (low-cost) полети от България" - Eenk.com

"Нискотарифни (low-cost) полети от България" - Eenk.com: "За момента от и до България летят 4 нискотарифни авиокомпании с градове съответно:

- MyAir - основни градове са Венеция, Милано и Болоня, но летят и София-Рим. Не всеки ден има полети до тези дестинации, така че проверете детайлите.
- GermanWings - център на полетите - Кьолн. От 9 юни 2007 започват полети от Варна и Бургас до Берлин.
- SkyEurope - само София - Виена. От там обаче има полети навсякъде.
- WizzAir - центърът е Будапеща, но от България летят само до Рим и Лондон.
- Други - като стигнете до някъде, може да комбинирате с титаните EasyJet или RyanAir, като сте си купили билетите предварително. Хубавото е, че летищата на лоу-кост авиокомпаниите най-често съвпадат. Т.е. не трябва да се прехвърляте от едно летище на друго."

Dnevnik.bg - Японската мафия уби кмета на Нагасаки

Dnevnik.bg - Японската мафия уби кмета на Нагасаки: "Кметът на японския град Нагасаки бе застрелян днес от нападател, член на най-големия клан на мафията, известен като Ямагучи-гуми.

Ичо Ито бе пронизан от два куршума в гърба, докато държеше на улицата предизборна реч за предстоящите на 22 април местни избори. Нападателят Тецуя Ширу побеснял, че кметството отказ�"

What Is the Digital Economy? - Apr 02, 2007 - Digital Communities

What Is the Digital Economy? - Apr 02, 2007 - Digital Communities: "What Is the Digital Economy? [Add to Bookmarks]
Apr 02, 2007 By Robert D. Atkinson & Andrew S. McKay
Story Art

For most people the digital economy refers to the economy conducted on the Internet, but the digital economy is much broader than this. The digital economy represents the pervasive use of IT (hardware, software, applications and telecommunications) in all aspects of the economy, including internal operations of organizations (business, government and non-profit); transactions between organizations; and transactions between individuals, acting both as consumers and citizens, and organizations.

Just as 100 years ago the development of cheap, hardened steel enabled a host of tools to be made that drove economic growth, today information technology enables the creation of a host of tools to create, manipulate, organize, transmit, store and act on information in digital form in new ways and through new organizational forms (Cohen, Delong, Weber, and Zysman 2001).

The technologies underlying the digital economy also go far beyond the Internet and personal computers. IT is embedded in a vast array of products, and not just technology products like cell phones, GPS units, PDAs, MP3 players, and digital cameras.

IT is in everyday consumer products like washing machines, cars"

News.bg - Световните банкери и мениджъри и техните до

News.bg - Световните банкери и мениджъри и техните до: "Световните банкери и мениджъри и техните доходи

news.bg

Председателят на управителния съвет на Дойче Банк Йозеф Акерман през миналата година е получил заплата от над 13 милиона евро. Той стои начело на списъка на най-добре печелещите мениджъри в Германия, съобщава Дойче Веле.

Председателите на 30 фирми, листвани в борсовия индекс ДАКС, според информации на ежедневника "Ди Велт" през миналата година са заработили средно по два милиона и 700 000 евро.

Това представлява увеличение с повече от 15% в сравнение с 2005 година. Тогава ръководните сили на водещите германски концерни са получавали средно по два милиона и 400 000 годишна заплата.

Скромността не е основното отличително качество на водещите мениджъри. Списъкът на най-добре печелещите в Германия се води от Йозеф Акерман - шеф на управителния съвет на Дойче Банк.

Неговият годишен доход от над 13 милиона евро и подсигурена пенсия за 380 000 значително задминава постигнатото от втория в класацията - Хенинг Кагерман - шеф на софтуеърния гигант САП. Кагерман получава годишно по около 9 милиона евро.

Непосредствено зад него се нарежда мениджърът на Даймлер-Крайслер Дитер Цетше с около 7 милиона годишен доход. Впрочем доходите нарастваха стремително не само в средите на водещите миниджъри.

Едно от малкото изключения засегна членовете на управителния съвет на туристическия концерн ТУИ - техните средни доходи спаднаха с повече от 38 на сто.

За акционерните дружества изброените по-горе доходи, които на обикновения човек се струват почти фантастични, са изцяло нормални и легитимни.

В Германия Акерман е на върха на една класация, но в международно сравнение, неговите доходи са по-скоро средни, отколкото високи.

Ето примери: Шефът на американската банка Голдман -Сакс Лойд Бланкфейн само за 2006 година е получил близо 40 милиона евро.

Неговият колега Стен О Нийл от Мерил Линч за същия период е заработил почти 36 милиона евро. В Европа на най-високи доходи се радват Марсел Оспел - шеф на UBS-Банк - с 28 милиона евро и Валтер Кийлхолц от Креди Суис със 17 и половина милиона евро.

Германският институт за икономически изследвания в Берлин в последната си студия стига до следния извод по повод разпределението на доходите и нарастването на мениджърските заплати в Германия : богатите в страната стават все по-богати, а бедните все по-бедни - гласи заключението.

Брутният доход на останалото население - за разлика от този на мениджърските среди - не отбелязва почти никакво увеличение от 2001 година насам. А тенденцията за разтваряне на ножицата на доходите се задълбочава.

Икономическият елит в Германия - към който, според Берлинският институт за икономически изследвания - спадат около 650 ръководни мендижъри - са постигнали реално увеличение на доходите с 35 на сто.

Освен това има и една група на така наречените "свръхбогати", които са повишили доходите си дори с 50 на сто. В тази група средният прираст на доходите е бил от около 50 милиона евро.

Тези извънредно високи доходи са главно в резултат на предприемаческа дейност. Само 5 % от тези доходи са от заплати и надници. Интересен факт е също така, че сред получателите на много високи доходи в Германия има много повече предприемачи, отколкото в САЩ или във Франция например.

Бившият финасов министър, 57-годишният Хан Дук Соо е новият премиер на Южна Корея.

Това решение с голямо мнозинство взе парламентът на страната.

Неговият предшественик подаде оставка само десет месеца след началото на мандата си.

News.bg - Южна Корея с нов премиер

News.bg - Южна Корея с нов премиер: "Бившият финасов министър, 57-годишният Хан Дук Соо е новият премиер на Южна Корея.

Това решение с голямо мнозинство взе парламентът на страната.

Неговият предшественик подаде оставка само десет месеца след началото на мандата."

Смелите не живеят вечно, но предпазливите не ж�

Смелите не живеят вечно, но предпазливите не ж�: "Смелите не живеят вечно, но предпазливите не живеят въобще

Публикувано от Ангел Грънчаров на март 31st, 2007

“АЗ”, “ТИ” и “ТЕ” са трите значими модуса на човечността в нейната необходимост, субстанциалност. Тази последната задава фундамента на "

Computerworld.bg: IDC: Българският ИТ пазар генерира $ 535,82 млн. пре

Computerworld.bg: IDC: Българският ИТ пазар генерира $ 535,82 млн. пре: "Пазарът на информационни технологии и комуникационни услуги в страната расте с по-високи темпове отколкото в повечето останали страни от региона на Източна Европа, и очакванията са през 2009 г. стойността му да достигне $791 млн., разкри Нели Вачева, “Country Manager” на IDC България по време на специална пресконфе�"

E-Commerce News: Viewpoint: Social Networking: A Web 2.0 Revolution

E-Commerce News: Viewpoint: Social Networking: A Web 2.0 Revolution

Nine Easy Web-Based Collaboration Tools

"I am endeavoring, Madam, to construct a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bearskins." -- Mr. Spock, trapped on Earth in the year 1930.

Most workgroups are stuck in the stone-knives-and-bearskins stage of collaboration tools. Their entire collaboration toolset consists of passing documents back and forth by e-mail. But the Web offers a variety of choices for workgroups looking to implement more advanced technology.

The Web offers tools to allow groups to collaborate on documents and spreadsheets, and to build libraries of reference materials, project documents and shared to-do lists.

Tools from companies including Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) and Zoho allow workgroups to get started at little or no cost. And they're easy to set up, too--you don't need to be an information technology (IT) manager to do it.

However, bear in mind before you jump in that you're giving information to a third-party company to store. If you're not in IT, you should talk to the IT department to be sure you're not violating company policy by using these services. And, even if you're in IT, before you use these services, you should talk to your company's legal and compliance offices to be sure you're obeying the law and regulations with regard to managing company's information.

Don't want to give your information to a third party? Wikis--aka Web sites that allow visitors to add, remove and edit available content--provide a good alternative for organizations looking to maintain control of their own software. Organizations can install wiki software on their own, internal servers.

Google Apps For Your Domain

The free Google Apps for Your Domain allows organizations to set up private-label versions of several of Google's collaboration services, including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk chat. Basically, it's the Google services with your domain name instead of theirs.

Google Calendar

Small Biz Resource reviewers gave the free Google Calendar high marks for the way it deals with shared calendars: "You can add as many iCal-based or shared private calendars as you want--Google lists them all on the side of the window. You then check off which ones you want visible on your calendar at any one time, which means you can have a load of shared calendars available without crowding your interface with all of them at once. For example, you can uncheck your kids' schedules and just look at your business appointments."

Google Docs and Spreadsheets

For more advanced collaboration, the free Google Docs and Spreadsheets allows users to create Microsoft Office-compatible word-processing and spreadsheet files. Mostly, people talking about these applications focus on how well they function as replacements for Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Office. But they also have collaboration features: Users can invite others, by e-mail address, to share documents, edit them simultaneously and publish them to the world.

Google Apps Premier Edition

Google advanced the state of Web-based collaboration tools significantly on Thursday, Feb.22, when it announced Google Apps Premier Edition, which combines Google Apps for Your Domain and Google Docs and Spreadsheets, with features designed especially for business.

Google Apps Premier Edition includes e-mail, calendar, chat, word processor and spreadsheet, plus 10 gigabytes (GBs) of online storage, and application programming interfaces (APIs) for integrating the services into businesses' own software, priced at $50 per user per year. Google also makes support available for the services.

Google Notebook

The free Google Notebook allows users to compile libraries of Web clippings of parts or all of Web pages, including text, images and links. The notebooks of reference and research materials can be shared.

Other companies offer services similar to Google's collaboration tools.

Zoho

Zoho offers its own free word processor and spreadsheet, which Small Biz Resource reviewers preferred to Google's offerings. Zoho Notebook won high marks as a tool for collecting and collaborating on text, line drawings, images, Web pages, video, RSS feeds and other media. It's currently in a closed test.

Zoho Projects is an online project management tool that combines task management, calendaring, reports, time tracking, forums and file sharing. It's free for open source projects, and starts at $5 per project per month.

Bluetie

Bluetie offers a suite of tools for online collaboration, including e-mail, scheduling, to-do lists, contact management, file back and file sharing. It's free for up to 20 users, and $4.99 per user per month after that.

Basecamp

37signals makes the collaboration tool Basecamp, which includes to-dos, file sharing, message boards, milestones to keep track of due dates and time tracking. Basecamp is free to manage a single project, and $12 per month for up to three projects with 200 megabytes of storage for file sharing. The price continues to escalate based on the number of projects and amount of storage for file sharing, with the highest-price plan buying unlimited projects and 20 GB storage for $149 per month.

Wikis

Wikis are the grandparents of Web-based collaboration tools. A wiki is a dead-simple way of building Web sites; using simple text syntax on Web pages, users can, without much technical knowledge, create links from text to existing Web pages, either inside of our outside the wiki, and they can easily create new pages as they go while simultaneously linking to the new pages.

In their pure form, wikis allow anyone to edit them, but many wikis nowadays offer access control and workflow tools to keep meddling hands out, and minimize damage by the well-meaning clueless.

Zoho offers a free service to let users create wikis.

Google-owned Jotspot was a commercial wiki pioneer; they're temporarily closed to new accounts now.

Socialtext offers wiki software with a twist--you can copy the wiki to your desktop, work with it disconnected from the Internet and then merge it with the online version; Socialtext is based on TiddlyWiki, a popular single-user Wiki that stores both data and JavaScript code in a single Web page that can be stored locally on the desktop or on a server.

Socialtext is available for free for up to five users and for open source projects, and pricing starts at $95 per month for up to 20 users. The company makes its software available as open source for free.

For people who prefer to roll their own, there are a wide variety of open source wikis available--just install the software on your own server, either on the public Internet or a private intranet or extranet, and you're good to go.

Of course, Wikipedia is the big daddy of all wikis, and it's a great place to start learning about wikis, and finding links to wiki software. Wikipedia runs on MediaWiki software, which is open source, and therefore available for you to build your own wiki.

 

IT Hot Spots: Niches, Industries, Regions

As the country climbs out of its longest recession in recent history, many companies are forsaking their foxholes and making a reticent return to the economic arena. After a five-year hiring hiatus, businesses are conveying their fiscal confidence by making an effort to reinforce their ranks. This national trend applies to the IT industry, as well, with 14 percent of CIOs expecting to increase employment in the first quarter of 2007, according to the Robert Half Technology Hiring Index and Skills Report.

“We finally got past the ramifications of the war and so many other factors that contributed to the downturn,” said John Estes, vice president of IT placement firm Robert Half Technology. “Projects from so many companies are finally being dusted off and pulled from the shelf, and people are hiring again.”

Yet, this growth has not been spread evenly across the board. As always, certain regions, industries and niches are hiring more IT professionals than others, with some elite fields and focuses paying more than the rest.

Industries
The highest-paying industry for IT pros is research and development. As the economy rebounds, companies are using their enhanced profits to find the most effective methods for making more money, said David Foote, CEO of Foote Partners LLC, an IT workforce and compensation research firm. As industries become increasingly competitive, corporations must dedicate more resources to collecting and analyzing market data.

IT professionals, including data warehousing and business intelligence specialists, are needed to secure storage and build predictive models to help corporations get the edge on their competitors, he said.

“Exxon Mobil made a ton of money this year — they set a record for the amount of income they generated, and now they’re spending a lot of time and money trying to find where oil is buried,” Foote said. “That’s IT, as well. That’s GPS systems, that’s looking at patterns. All this stuff comes down to data and computers holding that data.”

With the recent rise in military spending, IT pros in the defense industry also have experienced a boost in salary. Since Sept. 11, classified documents and counterterrorism activities have gained more media attention, creating an even greater need for qualified security professionals in this field.

“There’s been a lot of money going toward homeland security and national defense,” Foote said. “It’s not talked about a lot, but it’s created a whole job path for people, and it’s put a lot of people in security to work.”

The next-highest-paid industry is transportation, which is also experiencing the most growth. With 24 percent of CIOs expecting to add personnel in the first quarter of 2007, this field sits 10 points above the national hiring average, according to the Robert Half Technology report. This growth also is due to the recovering economy, Foote explained. As household budgets and disposable incomes increase, transportation is one of the first areas where people begin to spend more money. While last year the average person spent less than $700 on travel costs, this year the amount was nearly $900, he said.

“The airlines are having trouble making ends meet because of the price of energy and oil, but people are traveling like crazy,” he said. “And that’s an industry that has a lot of IT — there are all the reservation systems, there are all the inventorying systems. So much of it is IT.”

The manufacturing industry also is anticipating a high level of growth, with 19 percent of CIOs expecting to increase staff.

Regions
The East Coast is experiencing the greatest surge in hiring right now, with 22 percent of executives in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee (which are in the East-South-Central region of the country) expecting to look for new recruits at the beginning of 2007. Twenty-one percent of executives in the Middle Atlantic States — New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania — also expect to hire more IT pros.

Estes said although most regions are experiencing some sort of bump in hiring because of the national economic upswing, a lot of the East Coast is recovering faster because it also experienced a much quicker downturn. He said this pattern is part of the normal recessionary cycle, but the region took a harder fall this time because of the added stress of Sept. 11.

“When 9/11 happened, it was literally like a light switch just went off in regard to hiring — it was almost at a standstill,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, everybody was affected, but not to the degree the larger cities, particularly the larger cities on the East Coast, were affected.”

Foote added that the East-South-Central region also has grown because it has a relatively low cost of living and an agreeable location. With companies looking to use their returning surplus to expand operations, the cheaper real estate and lower wages required in this region make it a prime location for doing business.

“It’s really tough to get people to move to areas of the country where the cost of living is very high,” he said. “So, the question is, ‘Do you want to work in Montana? Do you want to work in the Mountain States, or do you want to work in the Sun Belt?’” he said.

In relation to pay, in-demand locations such as the Bay Area, the greater New York City region and metropolitan Boston generally offer the most for IT skills. The elevated salaries generally correspond to the demand created by the high concentration of companies there, as well as the cost of living, Foote said.

Globally, research firm IDC reports that although the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — will continue to drive worldwide growth, the “beyond BRIC” countries will provide the best financial opportunities for business in 2007. These countries include the “Emerging Asia” countries, Latin America’s Southern Cone, the Middle East and North/East/West (NEW) Africa. IT spending worldwide is expected to grow about 6.6 percent in 2007, but many of the countries in these regions will grow twice that amount, said Stephen Minton, IDC analyst. Some of the highest-performing countries include Turkey, Indonesia and Argentina, which have expected growth rates of 15 percent, 12 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

Minton said this expansion corresponds to increased buying power, which has created a market for international technology companies such as Dell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

“Those regions represent very small and immature technology markets, so that’s the main reason why they have such high growth at the moment,” he said. “The penetration levels are very low in terms of the overall number of people or companies that are using technology compared to the more developed parts of the world.”

Alone, the IT market in the Asia/Pacific region — excluding Japan — will reach $132 billion in 2007, up 10 percent from 2006. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam are expected to see increased spending power and infrastructure budgets, pushing them closer to the growth rates of the BRIC countries, according to IDC.

“The region’s astounding rates of economic and IT market growth have resulted in dynamic and rapidly evolving corporate and consumer markets,” Eva Au, managing director for IDC Asia/Pacific, said in a press release. “The region’s economic empowerment has created more discerning and demanding IT users who now require technology that is sensitive to the region’s unique demands.”

Niches
It’s no surprise that Microsoft Windows administration skills continue to be in high demand, with Robert Half Technology reporting that 77 percent of CIOs expect to hire those specialists in the first part of 2007. Network administration (Cisco, Nortel, Novell) and database management (Oracle, SQL, Server, DB2) skills are also highly marketable, with 71 percent and 63 percent of executives looking for specialists in these fields, respectively.

Because of the recent trend of aligning IT performance with business goals, customer-facing skills such as applications development and Web development are also hot right now, according to Foote Partners.

In the past few years, many companies have been forced to focus large portions of their budgets on complying with evolving government regulations, but now more of that money is free to focus on the customers, Foote said.

“For years, a lot of IT was in the back office, doing transactions and network security, but a lot of IT these days is customer facing,” he said. “You’re building applications in order to work offline and online with your customers and to deliver products and services.”

This shift is being reflected in hiring increases in related fields. Jobs in project management will experience an increase of 36 percent, programming/systems development jobs will grow 33 percent and help desk/tech support positions will increase by 30 percent, according to Foote Partners’ research.

When it comes to pay, enterprise business applications and Web/e-commerce development are the noncertified skills experiencing the highest pay premiums. Oracle Developer, SAP NetWeaver, IBM WebSphere and Microsoft BizTalk Server are just a few of the proficiencies earning 9 percent to 16 percent of base pay.

In the certified category, IT security and project management skills are earning professionals the biggest bucks. SANS/GIAC Certified Forensic Analyst (GCFA), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Project Management Professional (PMP) and IT Certified Architect (ITCA/Open Group) are just a few of the certifications worth 10 percent to 14 percent of base pay.

In 2007 and beyond, finding a specialty will be extremely important for IT pros, Foote said. As customers become more demanding, companies are looking for people who understand their specific consumers and can help them look into the future.

“It’s becoming more and more important that an IT person has instinct and real experience beyond simple technology,” Foote said. “Companies are saying that it’s a lot easier if you hire people who understand what the customer’s asking and who have been in this industry.”

Niches are becoming narrower, and specialists have to add more focused faculties to their already-concentrated skill sets. For example, where certified Oracle database administrators used to be marketable for their database skills alone, hiring managers are now looking for candidates who have experience working with specific types of data, Foote said.

“What we’re finding is, not only do you need that specialization in technology, but now you might need more than that,” he said. “The very definition of what a specialist is has changed from a person that’s specialized in just one thing to that person having to specialize in several things that surround that.”