Trendlines: New, Hot, Unexpected

SAP's Mid-Market Push Creates Skills Gap

SAP's strategy to win small and midsize companies as customers while it expands its new product offerings is creating a widening supply-and-demand gap for these new SAP skills inside IT departments, according to recent IT skills and salary research from Foote Partners.

SAP's expansion has "caused skills and labor shortages that have gripped sizable segments of the employment market in North America and around the world, and created some nasty supply-and-demand fluctuations," notes David Foote, CEO and chief research officer of Foote Partners, in the firm's first-quarter 2008 "IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index."SAP product skills are among those noncertified skills displaying the most dramatic growth in market value during the past year, according to Foote Partners data.

Foote Partners estimates that SAP's products are found inside 48,000 companies in 120 countries. Newer ...