The application development & support market has remained in a positive position throughout this year with only the upcoming holiday period stalling the slow but steady momentum. We have seen demand in the usual areas predominantly led by .Net & Java but we are seeing most demand and probably the shortest supply in tier one ERP skills (mainly SAP & Oracle), Microsoft SharePoint, Front End Web and Mobile Development. With that in mind the demand for contractors skilled in Agile development methodology continues to rise, as companies move away from large scale in house software development programs in favour of quicker rapid deployment of products and services. When companies do commit to large scale software programs they are looking to utilise a combination of in house resources, contractors, local specialist service providers as well as global outsourcers. This creates greater spread of risk on key deliverables, flexibility with resources but major challenges in vendor management, accountability, communication and ultimately decision making.

Companies are increasingly looking at consolidated ERP systems with Oracle and SAP taking a majority market share but we have also seen a number of companies committing more capital expenditure to JDE, PeopleSoft and Seibel upgrades as in most cases they offer a much more cost effective solution rather than the larger investment needed to implement Oracle or SAP. You will see from our salary review that SAP Basis & Oracle Database Administrators have experienced the largest rate & salary increases due to high demand and increasingly low supply. We have also seen a similar trend in demand for HR/Payroll consulting skills across most of the major ERP products. Due to the shortage of available skills in this area we have seen companies bringing resources from overseas to meet demand on critical projects. As with any technology skills shortage there has been a large push from candidates looking to enter the contracting market in order to take advantage of higher daily rates, this in turn has led to a large number of permanent positions being left open for 6-12 months.

What Next?

For 2012 I expect to see consistent demand for enterprise software developers, mobile/web developers and in particular ERP specialists. Most of the major investment will come from the Banking & Finance, Insurance, Superannuation and Media industries as they look to modernise their service offerings and ability to interact with their increasingly technology demanding customers. I expect the size of internal software development and application support teams to stagnate or potentially diminish as companies continue to take advantage of developments in Cloud Computing (SAAS/PAAS), OpenSource/SOA and the economies of scale on offer from global software services companies especially those with offshore development centres. As with any trend towards outsourcing/offshoring we will see ICT providers moving quickly to snap up any available resources in order to build their resource capability but often to re-deploy these people back into sites where they have valuable IP and customer relationships.

 But don’t take my word for it, check out http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1535314 for the experts opinion.

Ambition 2012 Application Salary Guide

Do you agree with my comments or want to offer a different perspective to salaries and/or trends in software development? If so please feel free to add your comments here or email me directly at rory.herity@ambition.com.au

Ok, so you have finished VCE and scored a higher enter score than most, your heart skips a beat spending endless hours writing code and you decide you want to be a programmer. What programming language do you wish to learn? Which will be better in terms of job prospects? What language would still be in high demand in 5, 10 or 15 years’ time?

In most cases, a language is chosen by development teams because they know it, feel it’s the most cutting edge technology on the market, or feel it would result in a cost effective method to implement in to their website.

Ideally, development teams should examine the strengths and weaknesses in using both technologies instead of going for whatever is hip in the marketplace.

Hopefully this comparison sheds some light as to what technology is best for you and your future as a programmer.

Current Demand

I did a quick search on seek and found that 1,645 results were found in Australia with the key word, “.NET”, and 4,061 results were found with, “JAVA”. What does this say about what’s happening in .NET? Should these figures be the contributing factor to what technology to use?

By no means should you consider this data as concrete evidence without considering other variables – like how much competition you have with other programmers in your field, how many roles are available in your area, and how many roles are available within your skill level (junior, mid-level or senior). You should conduct your own preliminary searches on different job boards before evaluating what career path you should take.

Pros and Cons

After conducting a survey of candidates, from junior to senior programmers, they have outlined the following positives and negatives of using each technology.

.NET

Pros

• Strong framework for building rich GUI;   
• Easy-to-use tools; 
• Has built-in support for Web services standards.

Cons

• Framework runs only on Windows
• Costly
• .Net has a bad history of security vulnerabilities

JAVA

Pros

• It’s free
• Java is object orientated and easy to use
• -Has an ability to manipulate Java encryptions

Cons

• Security restrictions can be an issue
• Bugs exist in some library implementations
• Java is more memory consuming as opposed to .Net

Future Trends

With this being said, it can be difficult to predict which technology will last the test of time. However, you can definitely determine that large corporations that have been using Java will surely continue their relationship with Java, while companies that use .Net, will definitely look for faster development time to stay ahead of the game and drop .Net altogether.

Also, with Java being a free application and known as an easy programming language, why would you continue with .Net?  In my opinion, it makes sense to stick with Java as studies have shown that Java increases programmer efficiency resulting in quicker results. Programmers also get to enjoy writing better code with fewer bugs than .Net, which in turn reduces development time.

However, whatever you endeavour to do, it’s important to select a programming language that you wish to master and specialise in. If you want to be more marketable to a potential employee, you need to be an expert in your field rather than be a jack of all languages and a master of none.

Working within the application development space you get a front seat into the newest trends within technology. In the past 12 months iPhone and Android development has increased dramatically. Every company, from the one man operation in a shed to the massive corporate, is jumping on the band wagon in a race to get to the finish line first with the best most user friendly applications but which direction should they go, iPhone or Android?

With the new iPhone coming out and Android continuing to deploy better and better hardware; and both operating systems rolling out exciting new features and innovations with each release, which is better? After reading countless blogs and speaking with the frontline users I have come up with a couple of different categories in which both iPhone and Android go head to head and help you decide…

Useability

This one is a big one for me as I want to be able to pick something up and with ease understand what I’m doing.

• iPhone- able to pick it up and with a quick slide you are in the main screen where you can easily navigate and tap the icon needed
• Android- after figuring out how to unlock the device (depending on the device you are operating) you have to navigate your way through a number of screens

Battery Life

With all the applications and things you can do on devices these days with cameras, music and games battery life is a big issue.

• iPhone- after the first few releases iPhone have taken battery life very serious and from all accounts have got it right
• Android- they still have some work to do with all of the applications available you can almost watch the battery drain

Keyboard

This is something I had hesitations about when considering my fingers arn’t the skinniest on the block.

• iPhone - once you get past the fear of fat fingers the iPhone’s fully equipped keyboard that is touch screen takes the cake
• Android – once again, depending on the device but overall rated; harder to use with sometimes needing to change settings just to find hidden keys

Syncing

This is one of the newer and more helpful uses on both iPhone and Android

• iPhone – if you are looking to sync with Outlook, address book or iTunes iPhone is hands down winner
• Android- easily the winner if you are only trying to sync with Google servers but it’s not so keen on syncing with other data sources like Outlook, Address books and iTunes

Ok so I admit it, I do own an iPhone so my opinion is biased but I would like to get your opinion! Do you use both or have you used both and decided to move to one because it’s easier and the functionality meets your need better?

I recently read a blog called Migrating ASP.NET MVC 2 applications to ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 by Elion Lipton. On January 13^th 2011 Microsoft released an update to MVC. Elion speaks about the MVC usage, what it can do and what it can’t do.

But who really benefits from the change? What are the pros and cons of installing MVC3 and updating your MVC 2 applications?

Whilst it is new and improved I don’t necessarily believe it is a revolution, here are the notes from Lipton’s blog. What are your thoughts, do you think it is a revolution?

Usage

The only requirement for this tool is that you have .NET Framework 4 on the machine. You do not need to have Visual Studio or ASP.NET MVC installed (unless you want to open your project!). Even though the tool performs an automatic backup of your solution it is recommended that you perform a manual backup of your solution as well.

To convert an ASP.NET MVC 2 project built with Visual Studio 2010 to an ASP.NET MVC 3 project in Visual Studio 2010 perform these steps:

1. Launch the converter
2. Select the solution
3. Click the “Convert” button

To convert an ASP.NET MVC 2 project built with Visual Studio 2008 to an ASP.NET MVC 2 project in Visual Studio 2010:

• Open the project in Visual Studio 2010 to convert the solution and project file formats from VS2008 to VS2010
• Upgrade the .NET Framework target version of each project to .NET Framework 4 because ASP.NET MVC 3 is compatible with only .NET Framework 4
• Launch the converter
• Select the solution
• Click the “Convert” button

What it can do

• Open up ASP.NET MVC 2 projects from Visual Studio 2010 (no other versions of ASP.NET MVC or Visual Studio are supported)
• Create a full backup of your solution’s folder
• For every VB or C# project that has a reference to System.Web.Mvc.dll it will (this includes ASP.NET MVC web application projects as well as ASP.NET MVC test projects)
• Update references to ASP.NET MVC 2

For every VB or C# ASP.NET MVC Web Application it will:

• Change the project type to an ASP.NET MVC 3 project
• Update the root ~/web.config references to ASP.NET MVC 3
• Update the root ~/web.config to have a binding redirect from ASP.NET MVC 2 to ASP.NET MVC 3
• Update the ~/Views/web.config references to ASP.NET MVC 3
• Add or update the JavaScript files (add jQuery, add jQuery.Validate, add Microsoft AJAX, add/update Microsoft MVC AJAX, add Microsoft MVC Validation adapter)
• Unknown project types or project types that have nothing to do with ASP.NET MVC will not be updated

What it can’t do

• It cannot convert projects build with Visual Studio 2008 or with .NET Framework 3.5.
• It can have issues if your solution contains projects that are not located under the solution directory.
• If you are using a source control system it might have problems overwriting files. It is recommended that before converting you check out all files from the source control system.
• It cannot change code in the application that might need to be changed due to breaking changes between ASP.NET MVC 2 and ASP.NET MVC 3.

Notes from Eilon Lipton’s Blog, 28/07/2011

 There are a few critical things you need to consider and understand before you make that move from permanent employment to contract…

Prioritise!

There are four key factors you need to consider before you proceed. Money, Technology, Projects and Location. What is most important to you?  The chances are if you have genuinely set your heart on being a contractor money and technology will be top of the list.

1. Money

Most of the time when you’re doing full time contract work you will have to spend just as much time trying to find that work. If your salary was $80k (roughly $40/hr) you have to think about taxes, driving, phone calls, buying software, IDEs, and lots of other expenses. General rule of thumb is to put a 30% mark up on your regular pay. Of course in this industry, you have to do what you have to do to get some work so don’t be too rigid with your negotiations and remember its easier to find your next assignment when you’re already working –creditability and current project work counts a lot for your marketability.

1. Technology & Projects

Find a technology language you enjoy and have a genuine interest in, then specialise. Get certified and then use that as a competitive advantage. Once you have these certifications and you have that niche desired skill you will more than likely get an opportunity to work on some pretty exciting stuff. Cutting edge, new and definitely challenging. Your employer certainly won’t want you maintaining old systems if you have the skills to take their business forward. 

1. Location



You need to be flexible so if you’re based in Sydney, be prepared to travel anywhere from Parramatta, CBD,  North Ryde to Chatswood. It’s about the work and the reward so balance those against a bit of travel time.   

So flip the tables around, what are employers looking for from a contractor?

After meeting with a senior development manager recently of a top 50 ASX listed organisation, he highlighted to me the importance of his contractors willingness to be flexible on their projects, be prepared to one day be stuck into one project, to then be moved on to something completely different.

He added that they  also look for people who have successfully worked through the full development life cycle with scars and stories to prove it. It’s import you can show how quickly you can solve problems, think fast and deliver on often failing projects and your personal stock will skyrocket!

Personally I wouldn’t advise everyone to jump into the contract market. Yes the money may be attractive but whether it’s right for you is a matter of personal choice.

Everybody knows that the future of IT development and business is only going to become more focussed on mobile applications. Everybody is trying to get involved from recruiters, blue chip corporates, hobbyist developers, budding entrepreneurs and SMEs. 20% of web traffic now comes from mobile phones and everybody I know has a phone where they can surf the net. However, is this growing market stuck in limbo?

Here are three trends that I have noted in the mobile/iPhone development space:

1. Every client wants a developer who has proven experience of delivering commercial applications, sometimes relevant applications in their field (e.g. banks want candidates who have delivered mobile banking apps before).

2. There are plenty of developers want to get involved in mobile or iPhone development but lack the ‘commercial’ exposure required by most and are labelled as ‘hobbyists’.

3. The candidates who do have the proven commercial experience in iPhone/mobile development have a different focus and more often than not are focusing on their own enterprise (either developing apps themselves or providing a specialist mobile apps solutions company) or contracting over permanent work.

As a result contract rates and the cost of assembling a team sky rocket. I’ve spoken to iPhone developers quoting from $600-1000 per day, which compared to other fields is pricey given that some may only have 2-3 years of iPhone experience.

I put this to a candidate I’ve been working with and he pointed out that although most business recognise the trend towards mobile traffic, most mobile apps weren’t generating a ROI. He said that companies were coming up with innovate and functional ideas, but failing to turn these into profit making services.

I’d be interested to hear peoples thoughts on how the market will take shape. Given all the above (high costs, lack of ROI, lack of available skills), will mobile development be as expansive and grow as quickly as some trends suggest?

Ambition recently hosted our first user group at our head office in Sydney.

We were joined by the Silverlight Designer and Developer Network who meet once every month to discuss all things applications and Silverlight. However, the focus of the group is not just on developers, it’s for designers who don’t traditionally have the community and support that developers have.

The user group was attended by 15 people who relaxed and talked over pizza and beer. The meeting focused on promoting the development of ideas and best practices for anyone who works with Silverlight.

Chris Anderson, the founder of the Sydney chapter of the Silverlight Designer and Developer Network, commented that Silverlight is interesting for both developers and designers. “Due in part to Silverlight’s excellent separation of design and development concerns, we have new problems to solve around finding the best ways to work together. The user group intends on bringing the two groups together to explore this further”.

Chris Anderson originally started the user group to enable both experienced and new Silverlight designers and developers to network and share their knowledge around Silverlight (and its associated technologies, such as Windows Phone 7, Light Switch, etc.).  They get together, listen to a couple of talks, and hopefully go home with some new contacts and knowledge they can put to use in their own work.

Are you in a user group and what benefits do you see?

Contactors have been part of the IT landscape since the early 1980s. Large project teams were formed to rewrite or convert manual paper based legacy systems and processes to computerised/automated processes. Contractors came into their own as a highly skilled, mobile workforce whose expertise could be used for the duration of the project and then let go when no longer needed.

Despite their long history in our workforce landscape myths still abound around the perceived disadvantages of contracting.

MYTH 1.  YOUR SKILLS WILL BECOME OUTDATED

This is a common fear that, over time and without training, your skills will become redundant and it will be hard to find work. This can be a problem not only for contractors but also permanent employees who don’t invest time inself-training. You do need to work hard at keeping your skills updated and there are many courses and training materials out there to help you do it.

MYTH 2.  YOU GET ALL THE BORING WORK TO DO

There are contracts out there to do the donkey work no one else wants but there is nothing forcing you to take these types of contract. A lot of contract requirements are project based using new technologies, new designs that will certainly keep the grey matter ticking over.

MYTH 3.  YOU DO NOT GET BENEFITS such as sick pay, holiday pay.

This is certainly true and usually there is no “overtime” for weekend work. However these benefits are built into the increased daily rate a contractor receives over permanent staff and more than compensate for this.

MYTH 4. IT’S A HASSLE TO SET UP A COMPANY AND DO ALL THE ACCOUNTS

Yes it can be and will require the services of an accountant. However a company structure is not the only way to go contracting. You can also join a management company or simply go PAYG with the agency covering you for all your insurances and deduct tax and super for you.

If you’re thinking about going contracting but not sure what’s involved why not call for a confidential chat?

The New Year is always an interesting time. Resolutions are usually instantly broken, dieting and detoxing normally lasts no longer than the first week and obviously everybody looks forward to returning to work!  However as most techies are aware, the new year brings the annual geek fest that is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas each January where the vast majority of electronic organisations debut their new tech for the year ahead. (2700 exhibitors in total, basically everyone except Apple).

So did we see any game changing products?

Motorola Xoom

After a few years in the gadget wilderness, it appears Motorola are back on form with 2 of the most exciting products of the show. Their Xoom tablet won the coveted ‘Best in Show’ award, all the more impressive considering the large amount of tablets being introduced as every company jumps on Apples’ bandwagon. Using the new Android operating system Honeycomb, developed specifically for tablets (up until this point any Android powered tablet device was restricted to a 7 inch screen, hence the small size of the Samsung Galaxy Tab), the Xoom boasts a dual core processor, a 5 megapixel rear and front facing camera along with 720p video recording and 1080p video playback, 32 GB on-board memory with expandable card slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 and Flash support! With claims of a 10 hour battery life whilst watching video, the combination of this tablet and the new Honeycomb operating system should see Apple scrambling to catch up.

Motorola Atrix

Even more impressive in my mind is the Motorola Atrix, a smart phone with all the standard bells and whistles of 2010 devices combined with 4G connectivity and a dual-core processor, giving it the power of most modern laptops. The clincher being a docking station in the guise of a laptop, offering the user the best of both worlds.

House of Marley Headphones

Making waves not necessary for the most innovative product of the show, but for affordability and style, the new line of headphones from the House of Marley made a big impact. A forward thinking but minimalist design, the company gives a large slice of all its revenue to charity, making their products very hard to resist, especially considering the rasta coloured wires.

LG ST600 SmartTV upgrader

Smart Televisions are about to become all the rage, offering internet connectivity, media streaming, apps, video on demand etc, and relegating your current set to the dark ages. Fear not, LG has rather wisely designed a plug and play box that will deliver all these features to any standard television with an HDMI port, instantly future proofing your existing lounge centrepiece!

Samsung D7000 & D8000

Speaking of Televisions, Samsung announced the D7000 and D8000 models, featuring a bezel of just 0.2 inches, just look at the picture, no words required!

Towards the end of the event, industry leaders were invited to a very intriguing closed door discussion entitled ‘Life After the PC’, I look forward to January 2012 to find out the results.

What’s your choice for top tech award?

Whilst attending the FST (Financial Services in Technology) event last Friday, I listened to Greg McAweeney, the GM of RaboDirect, speaking about using Social Media to enhance customers experience.  Rabobank Direct is a specialist online-only savings and investment bank and the only bank that publishes a blog on its website.  They feel this demonstrates their openness and transparency and I was surprised to learn they are not afraid to showcase the good and the bad on their site for all to see.  The brainwave idea is that we must relinquish control, as Greg says, we never had it anyway!  We must embrace the opportunity to show ourselves “warts and all” to redress some of the crowning issues that have recently dogged the banking industry and, on reflection are the same complaints that have, over the years, been leveraged against the recruitment sector.  The banking industry has taken a hammering post GFC with little trust and much anger from the general public, as with the recruitment industry key concerns predominately focus around openness, transparency and honesty.

With many unscrupulous and unethical agents and agencies around it is my experience that consultants with an honest, ethical and assiduous approach will always shine out from the pack.  In addition using social media is a fantastic way to create communities and become a “trusted advisor”, a specialist in your chosen field and with something of more value to give than your average “common or garden” variety recruiter.  It is a wonderful opportunity to create an open forum for feedback and ultimately lead to innovation as posts both positive and negative can be analysed and addressed.

Obviously you need to have a clear policy around your social media strategy and to ensure staff members are trained and contribute to the development of it. More and more companies are implementing social media guidelines for their staff which outline how they are expected to behave when representing the company, with social media becoming mainstream these guidelines around their use are essential.  There are many celebrated cases of staff who have uploaded damaging videos online which go viral and can cause huge reputational damage.

In a recent interview conducted by FST, Greg McAweeney, General Manager, RaboDirect Australia commented that it is important to ensure your organisation has a clear social media strategy. Rather than just jumping in because you feel you ‘need to be doing something’ which is probably the wrong approach.  A coherent strategy which outlines your objectives, the implementation plan, resourcing needs and reporting tools will put some structure around your social media activities.

Ambition Technology is keen to create a strong interactive presence on our website (blogs, podcasts, Twitter, Facebook and a newsletter).  We feel it is important to be active in the social media space so we can provide relevant and interesting information for our clients and candidates alike and we can interact with them in channels they prefer to use.

Business and Social Media – Your Thoughts??