Eric Schmidt and Ronald Lacey: Separated at Birth?

Ronald Lacey is the actor who played the sinister Nazi interrogator Major Arnold Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Eric Schmidt and Ronald Lacey: separated at birth? You be the judge ... ;-)

IT Jobs Recovery

Every so often, I check in on the IT jobs market to see what skills are in demand. Job posts are a leading indicator of long term market shifts - gains and losses.

Last summer, the hot job skills were Java, SAP, Oracle, SQL, and C#/C++. Big jumps (from small bases) were posted in demand for Android, Google, Facebook, iPhone, Salesforce.com, and AJAX. As a category, big gains were primarily in job posts for programming languages and applications. What's changed since last summer?

Summary:

• Across all IT job skill categories, there was significant growth in jobs posted, with 30% more jobs posted since last summer across all tracked categories.
  
• The "Applications" category experienced the fastest growth, with an increase in job posts in that category of over 40%. "Platform" job posts are up about 34%; "Language" posts are up about 28%; and "Database" posts are up about 27%.
• The largest category is still "Language," with almost 65,000 jobs posted. The "Database" category is next with almost 58,000 jobs, followed by "Platform" with around 51,000 jobs, and "Applications" with around 22,000 jobs.
  
• The hottest IT job skills, based on the number of open jobs on Dice.com, are SQL, Oracle, Java, Windows, Unix, and Linux. See the table below a more complete list.
  
• The fastest growth (across all skills in last summer's analysis) is in demand for iPad, HTML5, Amazon, Android, Twitter, and Facebook. See the second table below a more complete list.
  
• New skills being tracked include Hadoop, NoSQL, Oracle eBusiness Suite, JavaScript, and Apple iOS.

Top 20 skills in demand:

Skill	Overall Rank
SQL	1
Oracle	2
Java	3
Windows	4
Unix	5
Linux	6
SQL Server	7
JavaScript	8
HTML	9
XML	10
C#	11
SAP	12
Dynamics	13
C++	14
IBM	15
Perl	16
AJAX	17
PL/SQL	18
BASIS	19
MySQL	20

Top 20 growth categories:

Skill	Growth Rank
iPad	1
HTML5	2
Amazon	3
Android	4
iPhone	5
Twitter	6
Facebook	7
Ruby	8
ABAP	9
IBM	10
Blackberry	11
eBay	12
SAP	13
HTML	14
Peoplesoft	15
VMWare	16
Salesforce.com	17
BASIS	18
MySQL	19
Python	20

Additional findings:

• Database: More jobs are open for the Oracle DBMS than all the other major databases combined (Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle MySQL, IBM DB2, and Sybase SQL Server). Oracle MySQL jobs are growing faster than any other major database, and Microsoft SQL Server shows a slight share increase in relative job posts compared to Oracle, but Oracle is still by far the category leader in the database space. Hadoop and NoSQL jobs are being tracked for the first time, and both have respectable showings, with hundreds of jobs posted for these skills.
• Applications: SAP has taken the lead in this category. Surprisingly, Microsoft Dynamics was the category leader last summer, with about 7% more job posts than SAP despite SAP's significant lead in the market. However, since then, SAP jobs have grown by a whopping 46%, while Dynamics jobs have grown a respectable 35%. As a result, SAP jobs now exceed Dynamics jobs by a slim margin of less than 1%. Across the major Oracle application lines (Peoplesoft, Siebel, e-Business Suite), Peoplesoft shows rapid growth, but there is far more demand for SAP and Microsoft jobs than there is for Oracle applications. Salesforce.com also shows rapid growth, but from a much smaller base.
• Languages: Java is still the language king, dominating the languages category with over 15,000 jobs and strong growth of 27% versus last summer. JavaScript (not previously tracked) and HTML are next most in demand, with over 9,000 jobs each; HTML skills grew in demand by nearly 50%! HTML5, incidentally, grew by almost 1,000%, though from a small base. Ruby demand also grew sharply, up by nearly 70%, with over 1,300 jobs posted. In fact, all programming languages showed growth except assembly language, which showed a minor decline. Adobe Flex/Flash seems to be losing momentum, with just 5% growth since last summer.
  
• Platforms: The biggest shifts in the industry can be seen in the changes in the platform jobs picture. Microsoft Windows still dominates the platform category, with healthy growth of 25% to over 12,300 jobs. I was surprised to note that Unix was second, with over 10,200 jobs, but its growth is slowing showing an increase of 16% since the last review. Linux was third, with nearly 10,000 jobs and growth of 29%. The biggest growth was seen in areas that probably won't come as a surprise: iPad jobs grew over 30 times (from a small base), and Android jobs tripled to nearly 1,000 jobs available. Other platforms showed huge growth as well: Amazon, iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook all showed huge growth (>= 100% growth); iOS is being tracked for the first time in this survey. Mainframe job growth is healthy, with nearly 1,700 jobs and 25% growth. Surprisingly, Microsoft Azure seems to be stalling out as a platform, with just 57 jobs and just 8% growth rate! Mac/MacOS showed a significant decline (-42%), also a big surprise!
• Skills showing surprising growth: SAP, ABAP, Peoplesoft, Ruby, COBOL (29%!), Fortran (29%!), Unix, IBM (65%), VMware (43%), Mainframe, Blackberry (64%), Palm (31%), Twitter, Facebook, and eBay (47%).
• Skills showing surprising loss of momentum: Sybase (-6%), Siebel (19%), XML (17%), C++ (17%, compared to C# at 25%), Flash/Flex (5%), Assembler, Embedded Systems (18%), Google (6%), Mac, Widget/Gadget, Yahoo, and Azure.
• Overall, IT job posts on Dice.com have increased significantly from last year, up about 30% across all tracked categories.

If you have any skills you'd like to see tracked in these posts, please post a comment and I'll see about including them next time. Thanks!

Oracle Applications customers reveal their future plans

I'm a huge fan of primary research, especially when it is paired up with great analysis. Some Enterprise Software and Solutions (#EnSW on twitter) analysts base too much of their commentary and advice on what they read in the news, see at user conferences, and hear from other analysts.

Computer Economics is an #EnSW analysis firm with a difference. Frank Scavo and the folks at Computer Economics do great research - quantitative and qualitative - on the #EnSW world. If you are an IT executive, or an #EnSW vendor, you owe it to yourself and your enterprise to check out their research.

The latest published research from Computer Economics is a study called "Go-Forward Strategies for Oracle Application Customers." In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention the following, and you should bear these facts in mind as you consider my comments:

• I have been in the #EnSW world for around 25 years now, including long stints in executive product roles at Oracle and SAP.
• My company, C3, may someday be competing with Oracle (and other #EnSW vendors).
• Computer Economics provided me with a copy of this $995 report at no cost for my review.
  

Here are some key findings from the report, followed by some of my thoughts about the results:

• Finding: Dissatisfaction with the cost and benefits of support runs high across the Oracle Applications customer base, with 42% of respondents reporting dissatisfaction with the quality of Oracle support, and 58% reporting dissatisfaction with the cost of Oracle support.
• My thoughts: That is a very surprising result, showing an astonishingly high level of dissatisfaction!

• Finding: Customers generally expect Oracle to grow as a share of their IT spending, despite their level of satisfaction.
• My thoughts: There are a number of obvious reasons for this result, including vendor consolidation, customer expectations of growth in their business coming out of this continued weak economy, and the difficulty of moving from one application product set to another.

• Finding: Third party maintenance and support is attractive to a substantial fraction of Oracle Applications customers.
• My thoughts: A far smaller percentage of Oracle Applications customers are considering third party maintenance and support as compared to the fraction who are dissatisfied with support quality and price. It is not clear to me that any third party can really deliver bug fixes, patches, and legislative and regulatory updates. Nonetheless, #EnSW vendors are increasingly dependent on maintenance and support revenue, and thus they are increasingly vulnerable to customers using third parties, or going off maintenance and support entirely.
  

• Finding: Despite - of perhaps because of - their dissatisfaction with the current applications support, Oracle Applications customers are not planning a rapid migration to Oracle Fusion Applications, with 5% planning to migrate away from Oracle, 24% researching or planning to migrate to Fusion, and the remainder with no plans to migrate to Fusion. e-Business Suite has the largest percentage of customers considering Fusion Applications, and JD Edwards has the largest percentage of customers considering moving away from Oracle.
  
• My thoughts: Oracle is just beginning to roll out information about Fusion Applications, with the first big "reveal" coming at this year's Oracle Open World. Many Oracle Applications customers have only a limited understanding of the benefits and features, and limitations, of Fusion Applications. Over time, you can expect this result to change dramatically.

• Finding: The report includes information about the staff required to run various Oracle Applications products, including e-Business Suite, JD Edwards, Peoplesoft, and Siebel. JD Edwards requires the smallest number of support staff, with e-Bueinss Suite and Peoplesoft at the other end of the spectrum to operate.
• My thoughts: There is significant value in this section, and in the report recommendations, for Oracle Applications customers.
  

Computer Research has done the industry another mitzvah in sponsoring and executing this research and analysis project. Oracle Applications customers, and #EnSW vendors, would benefit from reading this insightful report.


Links:

• Primary Research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_research
• #EnSW: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23EnSW
• Computer Economics: http://www.computereconomics.com/
• Frank Scavo: http://twitter.com/#!/fscavo
• Go-Forward Strategies for Oracle Application Customers: http://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1595
• C3, my employer: http://www.c3-e.com/