Data architects: You're "hot"

Yes you are.

Fear not, data and content-oriented business analysts, business and enterprise architects and vendor management experts: You're extremely hot as well. Enterprise application strategists, IT planners, network architects and enterprise project managers, you're not doing so badly either. And account managers, desktop/virtualization experts, mobile operations and device experts, service managers and business process analysts? They want to keep you around as well.

So what's all this about? I mean, surely it's not every day that you're called hot on the basis of your IT job alone, yet in a new Forrester report, these 16 roles are called out as being what CIOs need right now. And if you're already doing them?

Hot.

According to Forrester, the need for these workers is being driven by a mixture of factors, including changes in technology, a greater emphasis on risk-management and a limited supply of key roles. But they had some themes in common, as well.

The "hottest" ones, such as information and data architects, emphasized policy-making and oversight for data and security. Others, such as enterprise architects, emphasized information and process management, as well as vendor oversight. Roles such as enterprise project managers and IT planners were considered key because they coordinated business units and complex projects.

However, even if you're not in one of these roles already, there's still time to change this. Forrester vice president and principal analyst Marc Cecere encourages CIOs without the right mix of these people in their departments to find ways to rectify this, by tailoring career paths and incentives to these roles and by cultivating them from within their departments.

"Many of the hot roles required breadth, influence without formal power and knowledge of company culture," explains Cecere. "Rather than hiring these from the outside, source roles (like account managers or business process analysts) from within. This can be done by recruiting from the business functions and units, or through job rotation, training, and management of individual career paths."

In other words, even if you're not the "hottest" right now, there's still hope.