Nashville Technology Council

The Nashville Technology Council today announced the release of its Q1 2011 Technology Hiring Trends Report.  In partnership with Vaco Technology, the report was created to provide insights into the needs of the Middle Tennessee’s technology job sector and show the growth of what has become a pivotal portion of the local and regional economy.

Research concludes that over 925 technology related jobs are available in the Middle Tennessee area.  The report was generated from public job postings from large job portals (i.e. CareerBuilder, Monster, etc.), specialty technology sites (i.e. Dice), and local employer sites.  The total number of open positions was down 13% from Q4 results in Middle Tennessee.

“Vaco Technology continues to see a high demand for technology talent in Middle Tennessee” said Jerry Bostelman, Founder of Vaco.  “Technology consultant job placements are up 108% over this time last year and our permanent placements for 2011 are up 71%.  This is great news for the local economy and demonstrates the strength of our business community and our local technology talent.”

The highest number of openings came from enterprise health care technology companies: Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), Community Health Systems (CHS), Vanderbilt, and Deloitte. Core industries that are offering the majority of technical jobs in Middle Tennessee are government, healthcare, startups, and professional services.

The most prevalent technology position title advertised this quarter is .Net Developer.  Analyst positions were rebounded to Q3 2010 levels, but management positions experienced a decrease this quarter.  In addition to job openings, the report also illustrates programming languages that are required in the today’s tech industry.  .Net is still the greatest programming need in the Middle Tennessee area, with Java positions being a close second.  Open Source technologies fall just behind these skill sets.

J.Tod Fetherling, President and CEO of Nashville Technology Council, commented, “Local efforts are beginning to pay dividends as we increase the total number of tech students in college and high school and re-train displaced workers from other industries.”

To view the full report, click here.

A recent blog post by Ray Wang in the Harvard Business Review had an interesting article about the four personas of the next-generation CIO.  How will the next generation of leaders manage and govern the IT department?

In the article, Wang discusses four attributes and budget assumptions for the CIO.

1. Chief “Infrastructure” Officers focus on cost reduction, and account for 65% to 70% of the overall IT budget. Most of this CIO persona’s projects prioritize keeping the lights on and managing legacy environments. Disruptive technologies such as virtualization and cloud will play a key role in cost reduction. These infrastructure officers tend to focus on the technology side and internal-facing activities.

2. Chief “Integration” Officers connect internal and external ecosystems. With 5% to 10% of the overall budget, this CEO persona must bring together a hodge-podge of business processes, data, systems, and connection points with legacy systems and newer cloud-based approaches. Projects touch external systems and often address post-merger integration environments. These integrators tend to focus on the technology side and both internal and external activities.

3. Chief “Intelligence” Officers empower the business with actionable insights. Representing between 10% and 15% of the overall budget, this CIO persona must improve business-user access to information. A key theme includes placing the right data to the right person at the right time on the right interface. These intelligence officers tend to focus on the business side and internal facing activities.

4. Chief “Innovation” Officers identify disruptive technologies for pilot projects. Investing 5% to 10% of the overall budget, this CIO persona must drive innovation on a shoestring. Typically from business backgrounds, these leaders move fast, fail fast, and move on. They tend to focus on the business side and external activities.

I think this could also be viewed as the CIO and CTO.  In most organizations, the CIO has responsibility for Infrastructure and Integration.  The CTO will focus on Intelligence and Innovation.  Are we driving to four leaders in IT?

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/the_four_personas_of_the_next-.html

CIO Magazine is accepting Applications.

The Deadline was extended.  All entries due February 24, 2011

Submit today at: http://www.cio.com/cio-awards/cio100

Nashville Technology Blog (6/9/2010)

The annual awards gala honors Middle Tennessee’s technology companies, leaders and innovators. The inaugural event attracted 400 attendees for this night of celebration, food, and entertainment. The 2010 Technology Awards Gala will feature a “red carpet” entrance, VIP reception, dinner and the presentation of 12 prestigious awards.

Save the Date
October 28, 2010 | Schermerhorn Symphony Center

Nomination Deadline is June 11th at 5:00 PM.

Nominations are open to your company, your boss, a colleague or yourself.  Fill out the form below to make a nomination.

Nominate Someone Today!

Award Categories

Volunteer of the Year
Lifetime Achievement
Green Award
IT Student of the Year
Start-up Company of the Year
Innovator of the Year
Social Media / Blogger of the Year
Software Programmer / Engineer of the Year
CIO of the Year
CISO of the Year
CTO of the Year
Company of the Year (to be eligible, you must apply for one of the above awards)

Nashville Tech Story (12/23/09)

If you haven’t noticed, the role of the CIO is changing rapidly.  Spurred by the recession, IT shops are being asked to do more with less, like everyone else, but they are also taking on more business processes than before.  These are the results from the recent 2010 State of the CIO report from CIO Magazine.

CIOs reported their Top Priorities of 2010 to be following:

• Aligning IT and business goals
• Controlling IT costs
• IT governance and portfolio management
• Business process redesign
• Leadership development/staff training
• Marketing IT’s business contribution
• Rationalizing or centralizing the application portfolio
• Protecting customer data privacy
• Scaling IT globally
• Regulatory compliance

Most CIOs are thinking today about how are they going to get the job done with less resources?  The answer so far has come from outsourcing and contract service providers.  “21% is the average percentage of IT labor provided by outsourcers or contract service providers,” according to CIO Magazine.  In Nashville, this industry has continued to grow with local leaders like Emids, Wipro, Zycron, and Syntel leading the way.  In addition, the contract labor market is strong with companies like Vaco, Teknetex, and Tek Systems.

One of the more interesting statistics is the decrease in average salaries.  Average salaries are dropping 10-20% in certain industries.  Below is the average salary data for CIOs.
’06 . . . . $185,863
’07 . . . . $185,240
’08 . . . . $237,360
’09 . . . . $247,900
’10 . . . . $219,300

Of local interest, the percentage of IT spend of Total Revenues in Healthcare is 3.9%.  The overall national average across all industries is 5.7%.

For more information, click here.

-Abbie Lundberg, former Editor & Chief of CIO Magazine will be with on January 19th and 20th to discuss trends for the technology industry.  Click here to register.

Nashville Tech Story (11/9/09)

With over 1,000 attendees, this five day conference is the largest educational conference for data center management professionals worldwide.  Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Data Center World hits the Nashville community, March 7th – 11th, at Gaylord Opryland Resort, bringing together a wide spectrum of attendees including CIOs, MIS Directors, Network and Communications managers, Systems Software managers, Facility managers, Disaster Recovery specialists, Security managers, and Operations managers.  

Not only is there the opportunity to network with peers and potential clients from businesses across the nation, there are a number of chances to educate from these individuals as well.  Conference case studies will take you through a real-life data center crisis and teach you the ins and outs of working through the problem.  Choose from 7 different roundtable discussions, which will give you the chance to ask questions to a panel if industry experts.  In addition, you can sign up for a data center tour at Nashville’s very own Dolphini Networks or Vanderbilt University’s ITS Facility.  This event also has optional tutorials, facilities/greening tracks, product information sessions, and industry leading keynote addresses.  

To find out more information on this event, visit http://www.datacenterworld.com/index.html.

Nashville Tech Story (11/4/09)

The business of analytics is growing dramatically as we expand our informational needs for an organization.  Analytics can be thought with regard to intelligence for the business, information, content management (structure and unstructured), and predictive (statistical).  There are a plethora of products in each of these four quadrants of analytical tools.

A new global study of more than 2,500 Chief Information Officers (CIOs), released by IBM in September, reveals that leveraging analytics to gain a competitive advantage and improve business decision-making is now the top priority for CIOs. More than four out of five (83 percent) survey respondents identified business intelligence and analytics – the ability to see patterns in vast amounts of data and extract actionable insights – as the way they will enhance their organizations’ competitiveness.

These results and other insights are detailed in the just-released Global CIO Study 2009, which is the largest face-to-face survey of CIOs ever conducted. The study, titled “The New Voice of the CIO,” represents the insights and vision of CIOs from 78 countries, 19 industries, and organizations of every size. The study reinforces the increasingly strategic role that CIOs are playing as visionary leaders and as drivers of innovation and financial growth.

With an increased focus on data analytics, the survey also revealed that data reliability and security have emerged as increasingly urgent concerns, with 71 percent of CIOs planning to make additional investments in risk management and compliance.

As a result of analytics, the CIO’s role is changing to include the following:

• Making innovation real
• Raising the ROI on IT
• Expanding the business impact.

Sign up today to join us for lunch on November 12, 2009, for the launch of the Analytics Group.