Nearshore Blog

Mercado de TI na América Latina é promissor, diz F&S

O Brasil, há alguns anos, era tido como o moto propulsor do crescimento na América Latina. Muitos países vizinhos, como Argentina, Uruguai, Chile, Peru e Colômbia se beneficiavam da maré positiva da economia do gigante sul-americano, que agora passa a caminhar a passos bem mais lentos. Esses “hermanos”, entretanto, têm conseguido se desenvolver plenamente com seus passos próprios, com boas taxas de desenvolvimento e crescimento – e isso também é válido para o setor de tecnologia da informação (TI) em cada um deles.

A empresa de pesquisa Frost & Sullivan (F&S) informou há poucos dias que o mercado de TI na América Latina (ao se considerar o conjunto de produção de hardware, software e serviços) aumentará 7% ao ano até 2014. A empresa de análise considera que, com a maioria dos países da região em crescimento inferior a 3%, os investimentos na área podem impulsionar o PIB (Produto Interno Bruto) da região como um todo. É uma aposta ousada, mas que faz totalmente sentido.

Latin American Digital Literacy Gradually Improving

Digital literacy rates, that is, the percent of the population that has regular access to the Internet, hit 80% in North America (U.S. and Canada) in 2013. Worldwide digital literacy rates are thought to approach 40%, with U.N. estimating that close to 50% of the world's population has little to no access to the Internet or even to a computer.

Although the recent trend shows improvement, Latin America continues to lag behind much of the rest of the world in digital literacy rates at just 48%. Not surprisingly, digital literacy rates are especially low in many rural areas. According to the UN's Global Information Technology Report 2013, the reasons for Latin America's laggard status are three-fold. "Although the region is vast and heterogeneous, three shared reasons for this lag can be identified: these countries all exhibit an insufficient investment in developing their ICT infrastructure, a weak skill base in the population because of poor educational systems that hinder society’s capacity to make an effective use of these technologies, and unfavorable business conditions that do not support the spur of entrepreneurship and innovation."

SMB Security Outsourcing Trend Gains Steam

Larger businesses have been outsourcing aspects of their IT security operations for decades. This had not been the case for smaller businesses until just the last few years. Aside from using third-party network security monitoring services, the large majority of SMBs have relied on their in-house IT teams for almost all of their security needs.

The advent of the cloud, and the growing realization of their vulnerability and the consequences of a security failure among SMB owners and managers, has led to a growing interest in security services among small businesses. According to Symantec’s 2013 Avoiding the Hidden Costs of the Cloud report, more than 90% of SMBs were at least discussing moving some services to the cloud, and over 80% of the 3000+ SMBs surveyed were actively considering email management or security management via the cloud.

Do You Have IT Awareness?

You might assume that most IT decision-makers have a firm awareness of their IT assets and how those assets are used and provide value to the enterprise. You would be wrong.

A recent survey of IT professionals from systems integrator Kovarus, Inc. indicates that less than four in 10 (38%) respondents specifically make their investment decisions based on true alignment and value to the business. This means that for more than six in 10 IT professionals critical decisions are being made without the correct business insight, putting the IT department at a disadvantage with other better-informed business units.

IT Pros Lag in Awareness, Capabilities
The survey also shows that large percentages of IT professionals are lagging not only in awareness of their IT assets, but even of the capabilities to gain awareness. For example, 40% of IT professionals were not aware of their IT assets – a slightly higher percentage than make investment decisions based on actual business value and alignment. Thus a large portion of the IT budgets at these organizations are not allocated for correctly, leading to inflated costs.

Especially as many companies place their IT organizations in open competition with third-party service providers, this type of unnecessarily increased cost can be deadly to the viability of an in-house IT unit.

Furthermore, about two thirds (65%) of survey respondents said that they did not have the time, practices or tools to collect information on the utilization of their IT investments. That is, they did not have the capability of determining performance and capacity used on daily basis. Kovarus advises this situation is especially damaging to virtualization efforts (and who isn’t virtualizing or planning to virtualize systems these days?), as collective capacity needs cannot be determined, which can lead to environments being overconfigured by a factor of as much as 15.

Can São Paulo Break Its WiFi Bottleneck?

When arriving in São Paulo - the biggest city in Brazil and the economic heart of the country - your smartphone will probably recognize countless Wi-Fi signals. But you'll find most of them are locked and closed - and the ones open might not be very safe to connect to. Many times, when you pay to get a password and connect to one, the quality might not be as good as initially thought.  In other words, Sao Paulo is far from being a WiFi paradise.

IT Offshoring Trend to Continue through 2020; But Positions Suitable for Offshoring Shrinking

The number of IT employees at larger businesses continues to decline, but there is an end in sight to the multi-decade trend. According to the Hackett Group, the ongoing decline in U.S. and European IT jobs is directly attributable to offshoring, and is probably going to continue for at least the next several years. That said, the IT offshoring trend will likely dry up over the next 10 years as companies run out of jobs suitable for offshoring to low-cost countries.

Image by USDAgov.

Um mercado de profissionais disputados

Mudar de emprego ao longo da carreira de um profissional é normal, válido e necessário. Mas a partir do momento em que mudanças constantes transformam-se em quase rotinas para os empregados e empregadores, entretanto, algo mais pode estar errado. Este pode ser o caso visto atualmente no Brasil.

Segundo a consultoria Hyas Executive, a grande demanda por especialistas em Tecnologia da Informação (TI) e a pouca oferta de profissionais bem qualificados dessa área no maior país da América Latina faz com que estes sejam os profissionais que mais mudam de emprego no país, conforme conta o veículo especializado Computer World.

Smartphones Change the Game for CIOs

The continuing proliferation of smartphones is changing the game for CIOs. Your employees and customers are most likely connecting to the Internet via smartphone or other mobile device, meaning both internally and externally facing solutions must be adapted and optimized for mobile access.

According to a recent report from comScore, “Mobile Future in Focus 2013,” more than 125 million US consumers have smartphones and more than 50 million now own tablets. As a result, comScore says there is a “new paradigm of digital media fragmentation where consumers are always connected.”

Outsourcing Buyers Seek New Technology Capabilities

While outsourcing buyers still rank the same three factors in selecting a provider in 2012 as they did in 2009, a number of new technology capabilities which were not on buyers’ radar screens in 2009 have become important to provider selection.

As revealed by the findings of a recent IDC webinar, ““The Pulse of Outsourcing Q4 2012,” the three most important factors in outsourcing provider selection in 2012 – full range of IT and business process services, proven record of delivering on SLAs (service level agreements) and costs, and financial stability – are ranked the same as they were in 2009.

However, the percentages of respondents citing a full range of IT and business process services and a proven record of delivering on SLAs and costs were much lower in 2012 than 2009, while the percentage selecting financial stability slightly increased. More interesting is the appearance of several new factors selected by significant percentages of respondents in 2012 that did not appear in the 2009 IDC survey of BPO buyers.

An Evolving IT Industry Means the Demise of Many Traditional IT Job Roles

We are used to thinking of the IT industry as the driver of change in other industries and in business in general, but the IT industry itself is obviously impacted by rapid technological evolution as well. The first decade of the 21st century has ushered in a raft of new innovations in the IT industry, and these new technologies are changing the way virtually everyone in information technology works and even the way people conceive of their jobs.