It’s a cliché, but technology changes at a frightening rate. If you pay, or take responsibility for paying the bills, depressing might make a better word.

For example, the typical shelf life of a new personal computer is now just nine months. That is, its makers only expect to earn revenue from the machine for three quarters before a replacement comes along.

More worrying, some PC companies estimate that you’ll use one of their desktop machines for just 18 months before needing, not merely desiring, a replacement.

File servers and other larger computers tend to last a little longer. Manufacturers expect you to get two to three years front line use from such a machine before relegating it to a subsidiary role.

While software and operating systems change less often, the changes often need extra spending elsewhere as other software, hardware and support will probably all need updating.

Network technology may not change at quite the same rate, but your organisation’s communications needs certainly will.

Of course, you don’t have to allow the people who sell technology to dictate your replacement schedule.

However if you aren’t continually re-evaluating, upgrading and improving systems you could quickly fall behind competitors. It isn’t going to matter too much if you wait an extra year before following the herd to a new technical nirvana, but you will need to move on at some point.

In information technology, standing still is not an option—try buying a mainstream application for Windows XT to see what I mean. That operating system was superseded only a couple of years ago, yet Microsoft treats it like ancient history. So do certain other PC application suppliers.

While you don’t want to be a hostage to fortune, clearly your organisation’s IT plan must include an orderly renewal schedule. A good plan takes expected technical advances into account as well as the hardware, software and support costs of frequent upgrades and replacements.

This need not be as expensive or as difficult as you might initially fear. There cheaper ways of squeezing more performance from an existing technology investment than throwing everything out and starting again.

This is true if you can devise a forward-looking IT strategy putting systems and policies in place to take your organisation through the next few years without expensive discontinuities. This kind of planning is the core idea behind future proofing.

Or, more accurately, it is the core idea behind the usual meaning of future proofing.

Like many IT terms, the word can be hijacked and misused. Some advertisers use the word to imply a product or technology won’t be outdated for a long time. That’s a part of future proofing, but it’s not the whole story. Nor is it the most important aspect.

At the core of future proofing is the idea today’s decisions affect future decisions.

Most importantly, you shouldn’t commit to technical dead-ends. So, simply buying the best tools for today’s needs is not enough. You need to look over the horizon as well. There are two types of changes to consider, those inside your organisation and those outside.

A good organisational IT plan should closely align with the business plan. It needs to look forward to tomorrow’s needs. A growing organisation should put IT systems in place that can expand to meet future capacity and application requirements. An organisation expecting to get smaller might need to add IT capacity to compensate for workers or it might just need less IT.

Externally, you need to read the IT industry. Will company X continue to market, develop and support software Y?

Is the feature being heavily promoted by company A likely to become an ‘industry standard’ as promised or will it go the way of the Betamax video and EISA bus?

This can mean using an inferior technology because it is a standard. Standards tend to hang around longer than non- standards and new standards tend build on old ones. Of course there is the question of `which standard?’ but, on the whole, standards make a good starting point.

Similarly, there is safety in numbers. Products that sell well are more likely to survive than those that don’t. They are more likely to be developed, improved and updated. The companies making the products are more likely to be around to provide support. So picking industry winners can help.

On the down side, if you play safe and opt for obvious standards and industry winners, you’ll have systems that look a lot like everyone else’s. This might be comforting, but it’s no way to gain a strategic advantage over your rivals. Your system might be future proof, but your organisation might not be.

In some respects building a future proof system is like the way exporters buy currency options. Both processes reduce risk. You take a small hit now to cut the chance of a big hit later. In some cases those yet to happen big hits can be fatal.

You’ll need to do plenty of homework. Reading the technology press, keeping track of marketing material, paying for expensive analysts’ reports and attending seminars is part of this process.

As an IT journalist with some 30 years experience, I want to warn you companies don’t always tell the truth and other times they simply get it wrong.

Sorting good information from bad is hard enough for those who do it for a living. For people with other responsibilities it is almost impossible. Listen to what people say by all means, but don’t bet the business on a supplier’s promise.

At this point, you could be forgiven for thinking that future proofing sounds good, but belongs in the too hard basket.

Thankfully, there is a way around the problem. To find it, consider how company’s reduce currency risk. Few organisation’s actually handle their own currency risk management. Most contract specialists who agree to deliver a predetermined set of results.

There is no direct equivalent to currency hedging in the IT world. But organisations can move to IT arrangements where they buy predetermined deliverables and not specific tools and technologies.

For example, you might hire or lease equipment, not buy it outright. More specifically, an organisation could future proof payroll processing by hiring a service provider who delivers an agreed number of correctly processed pay transactions within a fixed time at an agreed cost. This approach explains the success of software-as-a-service vendors.

In an arrangement of this nature, the customer doesn’t need to know or care about the technology used or how the payroll is processed, merely that the job is done.

Contract clauses can account for any efficiencies gained by technical advances during of the contract, or they could be put aside until contract renewal. Competitive tendering means service providers can bid on a combination of service quality and cost.

Finally, future proofing is about managing risk, not necessarily eliminating it. It’s important to develop a realistic awareness of your organisation’s IT risks and the impact these risks have on your organisation’s main business. Learn where you can take a punt and where you can’t. If you start to think about your IT in terms of risk, you’re part way to building a future proof organisation.

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Nothing illustrates the role of information in modern business better than the emergence of the CIO or Chief Information Officer.

It’s a senior management role that first appeared in the late 1980s. In theory at least, the role combines information technology know-how with all-round business skills.

It may a simple and clichéd view, but the cartoon CIO should be able to read a circuit diagram, debug programming code, find out where the bodies are buried in a set of corporate accounts and understand the general thrust of a opaquely-written marketing plan.

Being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and stop a locomotive in its tracks don’t appear in any job description I’ve seen so far but they’d probably help.

CIO Magazine offers this mission statement prepared by the Gartner Group:

To provide technology vision and leadership for developing and implementing IT initiatives that create and maintain leadership for the enterprise in a constantly changing and intensely competitive marketplace.

It’s not a bad stab at defining the role, but the words could apply to the bespectacled kid hacking away at Linux in the back room of an ice cream parlour.

In fact, Gartner’s mission statement could apply to just about anyone working in information technology with a mere smidgeon of ambition. And it is London to a brick most enterprises in this quadrant of the galaxy regard their marketplace as constantly changing or intensely competitive.

Leadership and vision

On the other hand, I’m impressed Gartner managed to squeeze in the concepts of leadership and vision. To me these are certainly the important features that distinguish a good CIO from the dross. Of course, leadership and vision is not about being the first company to sign up to a new initiative being pushed by one of the big technology vendors. It means standing up to the snake oil merchants.

Likewise, CIO leadership and vision isn’t about blowing the budget on expensive new toys. Though some technology vendors use the words to imply exactly that. In their view visionaries spend money on their products regardless of whether they are proven or not.

And leadership most definitely is not about ploughing into heroic IT. The era of huge, unworkable mega-projects came to an end about the time the first CIOs appeared.

These days most companies recognise that information technology is a tool that will carry out the business plan. It’s part of the CIOs job to make sure IT and related knowledge resources are harnessed towards the key business goals and not an end in themselves.

Pinnacle of knowledge work

In many respects a CIO position in a large corporation is one of the pinnacles of knowledge-workerdom. It’s not necessarily the top knowledge worker job even for those knowledge workers with an IT background, indeed some CIOs have progressed to the CEO position, but the specialist nature of CIO work means such a transition is unusual even in those companies where the strategic application of technology and information tools lies at the very core of the business.

While some CIOs climbed to their position from technical careers in programming, systems analysis or even support, you don’t need to have an intensely technical background to reach this exalted position. That’s because in many case a CIO is more involved in applying technology to help an organisation reach is business goals than managing the technology on a day-to-day basis. That is why some people stepping into the CIO position and similar senior IT-related roles come from a user or application background.

Management education

If you do have a mainly technical background and you hope to step into a CIO role at some point, you’d be better off looking at expanding your management education and not your technical skills. Obviously an MBA will help more than Microsoft certification or any further IT qualifications. You’ll need a strong business orientation and some in-depth experience working on commercial applications in a key industry sector.

It’s possible you arrived in IT management with a first degree in a non-technical or non-vocational subject. Some recruiters might recommend you to top up your technical education before shooting for an MBA as a stepping-stone to the CIO role. In my opinion, it makes more sense to gather technical expertise on the job and concentrate your formal education resources on that MBA. Having some major project success on your CV is more likely to impress potential employers than any formal IT qualification. Remember, CIO is more about strategy than hands on computing.

Not all top-ranked corporate IT professionals are CIOs. There is generally a clear distinction between the role of Director of IT and CIO. The former is mainly involved with implementing strategies on behalf of senior management. It’s perfectly normal for a Director of IT to give advice at the senior management level, but the job is primarily technical. On the other hand, the CIO role is more strategic. In some organisations the Director of IT reports to the CIO.

The rewards for successful CIOs can be enormous. Of course it does depend on the size of an organisation and the size of the job. There are CIOs working in Australia with salaries well in excess of A$500,000. More often CIO positions involve more modest salary packages along with generous performance bonuses – possibly in the form of stock options.

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Things might not look too hot at the moment, but pretty soon knowledge worker skills are going to be in demand again and the employers who showed a dark side during the recession will struggle to fill vacancies.

Despite the recession, New Zealand still has a severe shortage of building industry skills and there are pockets of the IT business where vacancies have remained since the global economic meltdown began.

Australia is already showing signs a severe shortage of IT skills could hamper companies and government departments as early as next year. For example in Demand for ICT professionals on the rise, bottom is in Stan Beer at iTNews reports; “The bottom in ICT employment has been reached and demand for skilled jobs is once again on the rise, according to the latest market survey from a major technology recruiter. The news adds to a growing list of evidence of a return to health of the ICT jobs scene.”

A week earlier ITNews covered a report from Australia’s largest recruiter Peoplebank saying the demand for contractors was rising. A similar story appeared in CIO magazine in June with Seek Employment noting the overall job market was stabilising with IT consultants in high demand.

Australia’s ITNews reprinted a story from Britain’s Computing newspaper on July 7 saying the antipodean nation is busily recruiting IT specialist in the UK to meet a shortage.

On a related note, The Australian reported on a skills shortage in research organisations in Upgrade ignores skills shortage. And the New Zealand Herald reports there are many shortages in engineering.

The New Zealand edition of CIO magazine carried a report which suggests the majority of employers in the IT sector still face a skills shortage despite the recession. Despite downturn, opportunities remain for APAC IT candidates suggests one in four tech employers expect to increase their headcount this year. The story singles out specific skills in business analysis, datawarehousing, ERP (Oracle/SAP), web development and infrastructure (architecture) as being of particular interest.”

Some shortsightedness is in evidence in IT training budgets slashed at ITNews which suggests employers have slashed skills spending and can expect to see a serious skills vacuum by 2112.

What does this mean?

First, it’s a safe bet the skills shortage will return to Australia in the next year or so and to New Zealand soon after – the two countries are effectively a single market for knowledge workers. If anything it could be worse than before for a couple of reasons. Many skilled workers will have drifted off into other occupations or even early retirement. At the same time employers have cut back on training during the recession. While there are increased numbers of people taking tertiary courses in technology and similar subjects, many won’t enter the workforce in time for the recovery and they’ll have knowledge, but little experience, which means only a handful will hit the ground running.

Employers who behaved cut back staff, skimped on training or held on to skilled workers and pushed them too hard during the recession will all suffer once the skills shortage kicks in again. Knowledge workers will be able to drive better bargains – and recent experience will teach people to look beyond the pay packet.

The optimistic interpretation of the latest Olivier Job Index information technology figures says while the number of job ads continues to fall – the rate at which job ad numbers are falling has slowed. In other words, things are continuing to get worse, but not dramatically so. In fact the official line from Robert Olivier in this press release says things are stabilizing.

The Olivier Job Index measures the number of advertised job. In June the number of tech jobs fell 1.9 percent from May. They were down almost 57 percent from the same time a year ago. Both numbers represent a faster decline for tech jobs than for the overall job market.

According to a report last week in The Australian (Tech employment pool drying up by Jennifer Foreshew) only 16 percent of senior managers in Australia’s corporate sector expect to hire staff in the next 12 months and about a third intend to reduce their headcount. Foreshew spoke to a number of companies who made similar comments about a lack of new work.

Official figures issued by Australia’s Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) on Friday say the number of IT professional job vacancies dropped 7.5 percent in June compared with May. Year-on-year the total number of jobs declined by 63 percent.

New Zealand IT sector now positive

A report in today’s Computerworld New Zealand (New Hudson survey shows IT more positive by David Watson) draws on quarterly figures from the recruitment firm Hudson. It says a net 16.4 percent of employers intend to increase permanent staffing levels in the June to September quarter. That’s up from the previous quarter’s 7.7 percent figure.

Computerworld Australia reports IT job advertisements continued their slide in May, which is bad news for tech-oriented knowledge workers. Overall job ads fell by 4 percent in May and 52 percent for the 12 month period ending in May. The number of IT job ads fell 58 percent over the 12 months. The numbers are taken from Olivier job index

The good news is the decline is is slowing down and part-time and contract positions were up during the month.

via IT jobs slump 5% in May: Olivier – Computerworld.

On Wednesday Paul Smith wrote Job seekers are frozen out of market for the Information page in The Australian Financial Review.

Smith says almost half of Australian organisations have imposed a freeze on hiring information technology workers. He also said more than a quarter of IT employers have laid off staff this year.

The story is based on research by Hudson, a specialist recruitment agency which says the financial and professional service sectors have been hardest hit and the situation is most difficult in Western Australian.

Go East, because that’s where the tech jobs are. Network World reports on a Robert Walters survey saying Hong Kong IT vacancies are up 22.6 percent in the first quarter of 2009. It could be a good place for unemployed or underemployed Australians and New Zealanders to sit out the recession.

Hong Kong IT vacancies up 22.6 percent in Q1 – Network World.

Computerworld (US edition) lists some of the grubbiest jobs in information technology.

You may be ordered to crawl into the nastiest corners of your office — or to explore the nastiest corners of the Web. You may be required to stare zombie-like at a network monitoring console, waiting (possibly hoping) for the alarms to go off, or be chained to an endless series of spreadsheets and Word docs, looking for minute differences in data. You may end up berated, belittled, or sobbed at for circumstances that have nothing to do with you.

Even dirtier IT jobs: The muck stops here – data crisis, engineers, IT jobs, malware – Computerworld