Infrastructure management in need of trained hands

Infrastructure management services (IMS) is an area that is proving to be a major factor in IT space in recent times. And as business demand grows, companies dealing with IMS are rushing to ramp up their teams to meet this demand. While fresh talent is easily available, these firms are finding it hard to find experienced hands. Survey says that while there is no problem in recruiting people at the fresher level, there is a bit of an issue at the mid and senior levels.

"Companies have started feeling the demand for IMS talent in the country. The overall IMS industry in India will open 30,000-40,000 jobs in the next three years. Supply will be a major challenge. The challenge will be both on quantity as well on quality front".

Some examples how companies are cashing on this IMS talent, HCL is growing 100% year-on-year in employee numbers with headcount being 4,100 people. Wipro Infotech, which has over 8,000 employees & partner resources working on IMS-related projects, is continuously ramping up. Other system integrators like Infosys and IBM are also rapidly growing their teams.

Even the smaller companies in this space, such as Microland and Slash support, are adding to their teams. This has also pushed up attrition rates, which are currently at 40-45%. Sources say that while companies like Wipro and HCL have attrition levels in the 10-15% range, others, especially the smaller ones like Microland, have levels as high as 60-65%.

This is due to various reasons ---demand for people in this category is higher than supply, there are too many companies competing for the same people or even that people who have worked in the IMS space for some years want to move into development after a few years since they feel they will have more market value.

Says a Slash support spokesperson, "It is tough to get experienced people, specifically in the experienced level 3 personnel. The best way to engage them for longer periods is based on the company's ability to provide better roles and career progression."

Companies like Wipro Infotech and HCL are relying on their internal training programmes to meet requirements. Says Tapan Bhat, VP, HR Wipro Infotech, "Given that there are few large players in the market, companies do fight for the same talent pool. However, most of the talents are groomed internally. And this is done to ensure the team get wide exposure on wide variety of infrastructure platforms. To meet our internal requirements, we also ensure that there is a huge influx of fresh talent straight from campuses into our organisation."

Called 'the third wave of outsourcing' by industry pundits, the IMS market is pretty big --- at 12% to 20% of total IT spend currently and rapidly growing. Its size is estimated by various analysts to be anywhere between $80 billion and $140 billion (depending on how it is defined) on the total IT services market of $640 billion.

Source : www.offshoringtimes.com