The economy of IT, and ways to improve your survivability.

There has been much talk and more evidence of the currently weakening world economy. Many if not most companies have begun to look at ways of cutting back costs which has and will continue to affect the IT sector. But there are things you can do to improve your odds.

One of the most common things I’ve read in regards to what IT pro’s should do is to keep your skills current while adding new skills. This can be a rather daunting task though, if you are trying to figure out if you are going to have to pay for school etc. Fortunately there are many resources available on the web to help you gain new IT skills, but that also presents another question; what new skills should you focus on?

According to Infoworld.com, the new skills that are most in demand are;

1. server virtualization with focus on management
2. “Web 2.0” Collaboration technologies
3. Rich internet and mobile applications
4. Cross platform support
5. Web services

Older skills that are still very much in demand are;

1. application, network and service integration skills
2. Microsoft-centered environments
3. Linux/java-centered environments

You can read more about the infoweek article here http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/2008/11/181-where_it_jobs_a-1.html .

As I mentioned, there are many resources on the web to learn new skills and even brush up on ones you don’t use very often. A quick search on google for IT tutorials reveals all sorts of walk through’s and documents that could proove useful. Another method is to join communites that share similar interests such as WindowsITPro.com, or nixcraft.

Either way you choose the most important thing is to keep your skills up to date so that you can be flexible should you find yourself one of the unlucky who fall to layoffs etc.