What future for infrastructure specialists?
UBS isn't alone in shifting IT infrastructure support to India. Is now the time to do something more exciting instead?
Not necessarily, according to recruiters. Despite the flow of jobs offshore, there's still healthy demand for home-grown infrastructure support skills.
Infrastructure management is all about monitoring and managing a company's core IT services. It includes everything from IT infrastructure assessment, technical help desk support, data centre management, network management and security management. According to a report by Merrill Lynch cited on SearchCio.com, the global value of offshored infrastructure support services is US$55bn and rising.
Instead of closing doors, recruiters insist offshoring is opening up opportunities for talented UK infrastructure support people to take on more complex, demanding jobs. "The roles that are staying are analytical positions. Anything that needs face to face communication is becoming much more required," says Ross Riddleston, principal consultant at IT and finance recruitment firm Anson McCade.
While infrastructure-related tasks such as helpdesk support are being shipped overseas, recruiters say this doesn't necessarily mean mass redundancies at home. "Most companies will reabsorb people because there's a shortage of staff. And as many companies are bringing stuff back in as outsourcing it, there are other opportunities," points out Richard Lett, who manages the IT team at banking and financial recruitment firm Jonathan Wren.
Taking an infrastructure support job is also a good way to break into the investment banking world and gain experience of particular banking products, adds Lett.
Entry-level jobs for typical support roles such as voice/comms engineers, Cisco networking people, data feed support and application support start at 30K to 35K. More experienced candidates can pull in 50K upwards.
Andrew Keene, director at financial IT recruitment firm Thomson Keene Associates, agrees that there are currently plenty of opportunities for technical support people: "Demand generally is more for development than infrastructure, but it's a chicken and egg situation: if you build systems you need the infrastructure to go with it."
