SharePoint Administration | Notes Administration

Where The Jobs Are

The depressed job market has got a lot of IT professionals wondering where they should improve their skills. And Wahid Saleemi, writing for EndUserSharePoint, makes a convincing argument for SharePoint with this graph:

SharePoint is obviously on a roll but what's the next big thing? Saleemi posits it will be a combination of cloud computing, self-service business intelligence, and Business Process Management (BPM). All three of which Microsoft is incorporating into SharePoint.

Want a Job in Government? Learn SharePoint

"Want a job in government? Learn SharePoint," counsels Gary Blatt of the D.C. SharePoint Users group. His interview is almost a full year old but remains relevent today. SharePoint continues to be tremendously popular with federal and state government agencies.

According to Blatt, Microsoft was effective in pushing SharePoint into the federal government and now close to 100% of agencies have licenses. But despite the proliferation of licenses, only a small percentage of agencies are actively using it. Many agencies lack developers to implement their sites, creating a huge opportunity for IT workers.

Federal agencies like SharePoint because it empowers rank-and-file employees, giving them the tools to do more, according to Blatt. Such empowerment saves massive amounts of time.

For example, in a recent SharePoint implementation by the Department of Defense that encompassed data from 26 different organizations, the organization saved 156 person-days. This time-saving and empowerment frees up employees' time so they can focus on more important tasks.

One thing is for sure, the current administration is serious about IT with $34 million budgeted for e-government technology this year. That's more than ten times the amount typically appropriated for centralized technology spending under Bush.