Arunn Ramadoss, Micro Focus

Newbury, UK

Head, Academic Connections

Despite constant warnings, it is extremely worrying to read how UK governments have failed to address the IT skills crisis in the past. The number of students in UK IT courses continues to fall and has been declining steadily since 2000, so now tackling the IT skills problem has become a matter of urgency.

This is posing an increasing problem for global organsiations - the majority of these enterprises' IT infrastructures still run on systems that have been in place for over 20 years. However, workers with the necessary skills to maintain these architectures are approaching retirement age. Recent research has shown that more than three-quarters of CIOs expect the recruitment of programmers with the skills to maintain these systems to be a key focus of their IT departments over the next five years, and yet these numbers continue to dwindle.

While the numbers have caused some serious concern among the businesses, universities and colleges have rapidly moved away from teaching some of the most widely used technologies in the industry like COBOL. With a serious misalignment between the skills delivered by the universities and the ever changing demands of the rapidly evolving IT industry, the IT skills dilemma is slowly shaping into a very real threat to any UK plc competing in the global economy.

For this reason, not only do governments need to do more to encourage more students into the IT sector, but organisations must also take responsibility for training their staff in such vital IT skills, and work together with academics and vendors to educate current and future employees, to ensure a smooth transition of knowledge in the future.