IT Market Research (A short report)

In recent months, the brands within theICEway ecosystem have all been running social media polls. ‘IT Market Research’ features the results from those polls ran on our ICE & theICEway channels. As ever, we’d welcome any feedback you might have on them. We’ve included some brief notes on the findings but if you do have anything to add, then we want to hear from you.

LinkedIn

Whilst we did not receive votes in the 1,000’s, there were still enough to generate some interesting findings:

What is the top skill required for an IT services professional?

Security 40%

Programming 0%

Systems & networks 20%

Cloud computing 40%

How do you manage your IT services?

Via outsourcing 67%

In-house 33%

Which working arrangement do you prefer?

Home 23%

Office 15%

Remote 8%

Hybrid 54%

Does your organisation use cloud services?

Yes 100%

No 0%

Not sure 0%

Are you leveraging the full potential of the cloud?

Yes 100%

No 0%

Not sure 0%

Which do you prefer to use for work?*

Desktop Computer 31%

Laptop 69%

Tablet 0%

Smartphone 0%

*Less a direct IT-related poll, this is certainly facilitated by technology.

What do our LinkedIn findings tell us? Our participants would indicate that security and cloud skills are most important for an IT professional today. Interestingly, programming received 0 votes – perhaps Upwork and Fiverr are responsible for that?

It would also appear that most organisations are outsourcing IT services, although it was very close between that and in-house. Most LinkedIn voters prefer to work within a hybrid model, definitely a post-COVID development. Tech advances mean that many more of us can now do this without losing productivity, as home and remote generated over 30% of the votes received. Are the days of working in an office from Monday to Friday numbered?

All of the organisations who participated are using cloud services and leveraging them to their full potential. Cloud strategy is one of our core service pillars, so we’re delighted to hear this. Finally, we asked a less specific question on the August 2023 Bank Holiday. Most of our voters are laptop fans but there were still a decent amount preferring a desktop PC.

Twitter

We asked the same questions on theICEway’s Twitter channel but received some very different responses:

What is the top skill required for an IT services professional?

Security 50%

Programming 50%

Systems & networks 0%

Cloud computing 0%

How do you manage your IT services?

Via outsourcing 0%

In-house 100%

Which working arrangement do you prefer?

Home 28.6%

Office 14.3%

Remote 0%

Hybrid 57.1%

Does your organisation use cloud services?

Yes 50%

No 0%

Not sure 50%

Are you leveraging the full potential of the cloud?

Yes 66.7%

No 33.3%

Not sure 0%

Which do you prefer to use for work?

Desktop Computer 20%

Laptop 60%

Tablet 10%

Smartphone 10%

What did we discover then? Our Twitter voters disagreed with the LinkedIn ones on the most important skills for IT professionals nowadays. They dispensed of the cloud completely, opting instead for programming. Good to see that security was high on the list again though, especially given the enormity of cyber threat vectors today.

In a complete turnaround, our Twitter participants all manage their IT services in-house. There is a (relatively) shared view regarding working arrangements, however. Perhaps the days of full-time office work are indeed over then.

Organisations who participated are split on using cloud services and being unsure. There is no shame in that whatsoever, although communication levels may need to be revisited if that is the case. In an ideal world, everyone in an organisation should be aware of how the business runs. The majority of those with the cloud are leveraging them in full but 1-in-3 are not – as aforementioned, this is one area where we can help. Finally, Twitter voters also put the laptop first but there were some who prefer a tablet.

Conclusion

In ‘IT Market Research’, we have revealed some of the poll results we’ve generated over the past few months. They are certainly not conclusive but we hope they are of interest. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated and please check our social channels for more polls in the future:

LinkedIn

Twitter

If you enjoyed ‘IT Market Research’, you may want to read a similar article from CRIBB: ‘Cyber Security Market Research’.