Business leaders worry: who will mind the IT store?

Micro Focus, a vendor that provides tools for regenerating COBOL applications into more modern formats, has just released an interesting survey that states that business leaders may have issues with their IT departments going forward.

Basically, the survey of 450 North American and European executives (mainly C-level executives) found, is that they are worried that they won't have enough skilled individuals to maintain and modernize all those legacy systems they have. Instead, there's been a lot of emphasis on recruiting for the sexy new stuff, such as Internet and Web 2.0 skills.

Loraine Lawson, who me pointed to the study, has a headline that says it all about the urgency of this challenge: "Recession is not the time to lose business leaders' confidence."

The survey found that nearly two thirds (60%) of CFOs in Europe and US say having the skills to modernize core IT assets are the most valuable in a recession. However, most of the recruiting budgets are going to manage Internet-based technologies. Over half of all those polled (56%) confirmed newer, web-based technologies are the skills being recruited for the most today. Fewer than one in seven (13%) of the CFOs surveyed are convinced that they have the skills available to maintain their core IT assets.

The study was conducted by Micro Focus, in conjunction with leading international business school INSEAD. As Micro Focus CEO Stephen Kelly put it: "Failure to safeguard these assets is tantamount to a 'ticking time bomb' for global business. Organizations must quickly adjust their IT investment strategies to deal with recession realities. Everybody knows that Web 2.0 solutions have huge potential to transform all types and sizes of organizations but their development shouldn’t be at the expense of protecting and developing the IT assets at the heart of the business.”

Of course, there's a self-serving aspect to the study -- legacy modernization is Micro Focus' business -- but it nonetheless points to a situation that's been brewing for years. Much of the world's applications and data reside on mainframes, for example, yet many members of the generation trained in mainframes and large systems are nearing retirement age.

The research identifies a concerning lack of a drive to recruit specialists in technologies which typically form the bulk of core IT assets (e.g. COBOL, PL1, CICs). Less than a third of CIOs (29%) polled believed their organization was recruiting enough of these professionals, even though they state they recognize the value that these assets bring to their businesses. Only one in six (16%) CIOs have any confidence that the right recruitment strategies for the vital skills and knowledge required to maintain core IT assets are in place.

Loraine tied it back to SOA, which is now a cornerstone of many legacy modernization strategies, noting that the survey findings are "mixed news for SOA, depending on whether CFOs see it as a means for modernizing and integrating legacy systems or as a new replacement technology...  It may be time to look at either your hiring criteria or – gasp – actually spend some dollars training your staff in integration and SOA, at least insofar as it supports modernizing legacy systems."

"Gasp" is right -- provide training in integration and SOA... who would dare do such a thing?