UK: Alex Farrell, managing director of The IT Job Board, predicts that recruitment in key specialist areas will remain buoyant in the year ahead. Here, the company offers its predictions for 2009:

SAP
Alex Farrell comments: “SAP is essentially an expensive system to implement, and, as a result, I don’t believe that many new projects will be started in 2009. However, given the heavy skew towards SAP over recent years, I see there will be a need for staff to maintain and develop existing systems.”

SaaS
Farrell considers that the associated cost-saving benefits of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service or 'Cloud Computing') and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) services should also see a rise in their demand over the next year. She comments, “This will benefit SaaS-experienced software architects and developers, as well as project managers, and this could trickle down to testers, administrators and support staff with experience in this field.”

Recession will boost digital growth
Many in the sector have commented that the recession will accelerate the already rapid growth of the digital landscape. Farrell adds: “Carefully considered investment in online technologies (as opposed to a drastic reduction of IT spend) could have enormous benefits during a downturn. Investing in Web 2.0 technologies like XML/ XSL and RSS could see an increase in demand this year as well as the old favourites like Java/J2EE, C#, .Net, AJAX and PHP. Security specialists will also play a big part in any increase in online development.”

Mobile growth
The IT Job Board predicts that the mobile internet audience will continue to grow, and consequently there will be significant increases in demand for mobile developers and architects.

Farrell adds: “J2ME developers and architects could have a strong year in 2009, as an increasing number of IT professionals look to gain an advantage from the accessibility provided by the iPhone and Blackberry. The other big trend associated with these technologies is location-based services which will also increase the demand for mobile application developers.”