1
An Employer Perspective on Higher Level skills & learning
Stephen KellyCEO, Micro Focus International PLC
3rd December 2008
Micro Focus
• Leading Applications Modernisation software company• Founded in 1976 • Global company with 800+ employees world-wide• Top 5 UK software Company UK listed (FTSE250)• FY2009 double revenues, tripled profits in 3 years
• Blue chip customer base• 25,000 current customers • 91 of the current Fortune 100• Global Strategic Partnerships with IBM, Microsoft, Oracle
Financial ServicesFinancial Services ManufacturingManufacturing Health CareHealth Care TelecomTelecom Retail / otherRetail / other
IT Education in UK : 7 years of ‘famine’ in land of plenty….
0
200000
400000
600000
800000
1000000
1200000
1400000
UK India
IT Jobs
IT Graduates
Only 11% (approx) graduates in UK graduate
in IT related degree
compared to 83% in Vietnam
Sources: CPHC, HESA, UCAS, NASSCOM, UKTI
& Micro Focus Research
0
20
40
60
80
100B
usi
nes
sC
riti
cal
Rec
ruit
men
tF
ocu
s
valu
e in
rece
ssio
n
Core IT skills (COBOL,CICS, etc)
Modern IT skills (eg: Web2.0 etc)
Only 13% of CFOs are very confident that
knowledge and skills exist in their
organizations to maintain core IT assets
in the future!
The weakest link – skills?
0
20
40
60
80
100
1 5 10 20 30
Businessknowledge
TechnicalKnowledge
Experience (years)
IT SuccessDrivers
Organizations focus too much on
technology and too little on the Business knowledge required
to apply it!
Em
plo
yee V
alu
e
Why graduates – Micro Focus ?
Prepared to Learn
Grow & adapt to your organizations
culture
Fresh perspective
Can be shaped and mentored
Graduates are the key to ensuring transition of your organizational
IT Business knowledge!
Develop to take over
from retiring experts
ACTION Outreach (ACademic ConnecTION)
140 Countries
Over 25000 downloads
>15000 concurrent licenses
Over 7000 graduates every year
78 ACTION partners worldwide – 15 countries
Supporting academic partners worldwide to
meet the skills requirements of
Business IT systems worldwide!
The missing Link?
Industry Universities
Demand
Supply
Communication & Collaboration
The Missing Link
• Work Directly with Universities• Employer Advisory Councils
• Employer Strategy Forum (e-skills UK)
• Work with Vendor Programs• Micro Focus ACTION Program
• IBM Academic Initiative
• Microsoft MSDN – Academic Alliance
• Etc…
Active communication and collaboration ensures that the graduates entering the market have the skills that are most important to the success of your business.
Employer Contributions to HE
• Influence and Inform the curriculum• Find graduates with the correct skill set
• Scholarships & Sponsorships• Mentoring students
• Establish early relationship with future recruits
• Establish or Cooperate with Vendor Academic Programs• Support universities with tools and resources
• ‘Wake up’ call • ‘wasted’ years
• Ticking ‘timebomb’
• Recession reality
• Skills shock
• Solutions not ‘talking shops’• Colleges/employers
• Skills alignment
• Back to basics and fundamentals
‘Famine to feast’ – no quick fixes
12
An Employer Perspective on Higher Level skills & learning
Stephen KellyCEO, Micro Focus International PLC
3rd December 2008
Backup slides
Post Crunch Recession – impacting skills landscape
• IT contractors rate dropped by 12%• Ebay announces 10% job cuts in global staff• Bank mergers cause widespread IT job loses
• Lehman brothers
• HBOS
Good experienced IT people are in shortage and will be absorbed by
other organisations.
Mergers eventually mean BIG IT projects and IT skills demand will
climb exponentially when they come to execute.
The Micro Focus Academic Connections (ACTION) Program
COBOL recruitment
17%
21%
37%
19%
7%8%
18%
47%
25%
3%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
50%
critical extremely important important not that important not important at all
importance of COBOL recruitment
difficulty in COBOL recruitment
% respondents with COBOL applications deployed in production system
94%
6%
Yes
No
94% use COBOL in Production Systems
75% say COBOL skills key to their IT in future
1000 Business Managers