Technology Reseller - v10

01732 759725 BULLETIN : TRENDS 6 AI jobs in demand Data protection and artificial intelligence (AI) are two of the fastest growing areas of the jobs market, according to jobs site Indeed. Its analysis shows that GDPR has caused a 700% spike in the number of vacancies for Data Protection Officers since the rules were ratified two years ago. Demand for people with data protection experience is so high that the average salary for specialist data roles is now more than £47,000, nearly double the UK average. There has also been a surge in demand for people with AI skills, as the UK’s AI sector grows faster than those in the US, Canada and Australia. According to Indeed, demand in the UK for data scientists and machine learning engineers has tripled since 2015. With demand outstripping supply by a multiple of six, such roles now come with average salaries of £56,385 and £54,617 respectively. indeed.com Tech workers most undervalued Workers in the tech and IT industries believe they are the most undervalued employees in the UK and, if they had the power, would award themselves much greater pay increases than employees in other industries. When CV writing specialists Purple CV asked workers across the UK how much of a pay increase they felt they deserved, the average increase cited by tech workers was 57.7%. This was more than any other sector and just ahead of the 52.4% average increase suggested by IT workers. Across all industries, workers felt they deserved an average increase of 36.8% (see table) and an extra 8.3 days holiday. www.purplecv.co.uk % PAY INCREASE DESERVED Four out of five SMEs in the IT sector find it difficult to hire qualified staff members or keep existing talent in the company, a new survey of 1,000 business decision-makers reveals. Forty per cent cite recruitment as their number one challenge, with 24% complaining that key employee positions are often hard to fill. The latest Aldermore Future Attitudes report also highlights the difficulty of retaining the best employees. Over a quarter (29%) of IT sector decision-makers surveyed say they have a problem with a high turnover of staff; the same proportion view this as a major concern. Strategies to increase staff retention include providing a healthy work/ life balance (34%), flexible working opportunities (33%) and training (23%). www.aldermore.co.uk IT firms face recruitment and retention challenge Budget constraints hamper GDPR compliance More than one in four IT decision-makers (28%) don’t know which regulatory frameworks their organisations need to comply with and one in three (33%) believes compliance is the responsibility of the C-level, according to research commissioned by Pulsant, the UK provider of hybrid cloud solutions. Almost half (43%) of IT decision-makers say IT compliance is made more difficult by lack of time, budget and skills. More than one third (39%) allocate between one and three full time employees to compliance each month; 17% of budgets are allocated to the task. More than four out of five (83%) of those questioned believe the tools and technologies used to manage compliance could be improved through real-time alerts, better reporting, open integration with other compliance tools and more comprehensive monitoring capabilities. www.pulsant.com UK heading towards cloud security skills shortage UK businesses are at risk of a cloud security skills shortage as demand for people with knowledge and experience in the field outstrips supply. In a survey for Rackspace’s The Cost of Cloud Expertise report, 51% of UK IT leaders say they will need to grow cloud-based security and data protection skills over the next five years. Yet, only 26% of IT professionals in the UK say they have sufficient experience in those areas. In addition, the UK appears to be lagging behind other nations when it comes to upskilling IT professionals. While UK IT leaders plan to ringfence an average of 10% of their annual budget for training new hires, the figure is 15% in Benelux and 14% in Germany and the US. www.rackspace.co.uk 1 | TheStateof ITCompliance pulsant.com Introduction Exploring theattitudesandapproaches to thecompliancechallenge TheStateof ITCompliance THE COST OF CLOUD EXPERTISE REPORT 2017 Tech IT Education Energy Pharma Engineering Hospitality Banking Retail Public Service Tourism Media Real Estate Advertising Healthcare Charity Law 10 0 20 30 40 50 60 57.7 52.4 43.9 43.8 43.7 43.3 42.2 41.4 39.3 37.5 36.2 36.0 35.3 34.4 32.7 32.3 30.0