Are you worried about a recession and the impact on your IT department and therefore your professional "life"

Anthony Storti  April 1 2008 05:10:00 PM

Being a semi-regular blogger and a regular "lurker" in some cases I have found that blogging is an excellent way to share ideas and have frank honest discussions on certain topics.   When I learned that my organization, Sherpa Software, wanted to initiate one of the Web 2.0 technologies, I thought great "I can get paid for blogging".  How many people can say that about their job?  But this last question prompted my topic.   The word on the street and in the media is we are headed for a recession or some believe we are already in one.   Being a Product Manager here at Sherpa Software, for our Mail Attender for Exchange product, I started to think about a recession and the impact on IT Departments and therefore the impact on my product in general.

Here are some general indicators that I have picked up on through various articles about the general state of IT at this time:

1 - In a recent InformationWeek survey that I read in a recent article about the Economy - 43% of IT departments were being asked to either cut a percentage of the IT budget or cut specific projects.
2 - In order to scale back IT budgets what is the first thing to go?  76% stated new hires (so much for the idea if you were looking for a new job), 45% stated new application development including software projects and 30% said end user technology such as web 2.0-related projects (no not my blog!!!!)
3 - Another key figure I read is what is the mood of your IT department?  A good indicator of how your IT department is going to approach the economy.  53% stated they were cautiously optimistic compared too 1% that is bullish, meaning nothing is phasing them (I wonder which companies they are).

So how does all this affect your IT Professional life?  IT needs to be prepared to meet the upcoming challenges not be informed by the CIO that the challenges are already here.  One possible effect on your professional life may be (as I just heard from one of our potential prospects) retraining users to be more productive by organizing their email.   Another one maybe the need to replace more expensive systems with less expensive systems and more practical and efficient tools in order to reduce cost.   During a pending recession it is a good time to critically review your department’s wants and needs.  This could provide new challenges to IT staff, new training opportunities, new skills, etc.    All in all I think a recession will be good for the IT professional, with the exception of new hires, because this will develop new ways to do certain things and to refocus on existing strategies.  

As far as the impact on my IT department here at Sherpa Software, in particular the impact to my Mail Attender for Exchange Product, I have a very positive outlook.  Mail Attender is an email management product for both Exchange mailboxes and PST files.   Mail Attender is one of those products that IT departments can use to reduce costs, reorganize email to become more efficient and in general replace some of the higher end similar products that are costing companies 100's of thousands of dollars per year.   My outlook (no pun intended) is very optimistic but not blind that a recession is at hand.  Mail Attender seems to be recession proof, especially in this day and age of discovery and compliance.  That does not mean there will not be changes around here but maybe Sherpa Software will be one of those companies that is "bullish" when if comes to the mood regarding the economic climate.

I would like to know what everyone else is thinking.  Post a reply - blogging can be fun!!!

Anthony Storti is a Product Manager for Mail Attender for Exchange at Sherpa Software.  Anthony can be contacted at astorti@sherpasoftware.com

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