War for IT Talent Heats Up in the App Economy

There's no doubt that the rise of the application economy is driving most organizations today to re-evaluate the relationship between the business and IT. This shift is not only changing where organizations are focusing their IT investments, it's creating a massive amount of competition for people with the right IT skills. A new survey of 200 senior business and IT leaders, conducted by Oxford Economics on behalf of CA Technologies, finds that at least half of IT organizations are looking to acquire new IT skills and bring them in-house, most notably IT professionals with custom application development skills. At the same time, of course, that could just as easily mean that half the market is looking for external expertise. The challenge is that the size of the pool of people with relevant IT skills is relatively small, thereby creating a fierce level of competition between solution providers in the channel and their potential customers for the same IT talent. However, the study suggests that, when it comes to becoming software-driven entities, most internal IT organizations are moving at a more deliberate pace than most solution providers. Here are key takeaways from the study.