9:00 - 10:30
The Architect Role: Skills Demand, Pay, and Career Trends for 2010 and Beyond
Two diverging opinions dominate the discussion about the value of enterprise architects in an economic downturn. One holds that EA‚s are ill-suited to emergency situations where cost-cutttng, quick fixes, and meeting return on investment hurdles in evaluating project investments are primary directives.

Another opinion argues that continued investment in architecture skills - whether they are enterprise, systems, networks, applications, data, information, infrastructure, security, solutions, or whatever---is critical during chaotic cycles, driven by increased integration and strategic business restructuring activity. And perhaps most importantly, such investments help ensure that the enterprise will make it to the other side of the recession undiminished and well positioned to capitalize on growth opportunities.

Assuming agreement on a general need for architects, another issue is driving debate among Foote Partners 1,500 customers: the value of vendor-neutral versus vendor-specific architecture certifications. Our findings indicate that vendor-neutral architecture certifications are growing more important and more popular overall, but with some caveats depending on technology niches where vendors should be congratulated for their efforts in designing and developing architecture certs with strong foundations and good forward perspective.

In this session David Foote will examine one or more aspects of the current and near-term future state of the architecture profession, drawing from Foote Partners rigorous proprietary trends research involving nearly 2,000 US and Canadian employers (90,000 IT professionals). He will draw from salary and skills/certifications pay benchmark surveys; attitude studies; IT spending surveys; vendor behaviors, and interviews with several hundred IT and business executives and decision makers.

Presenter: David Foote, CEO and Chief Research Officer, Foote Partners LLC
David Foote’s reputation as a pioneer in IT workforce benchmark research and a keen predictive trends analyst began two decades ago at Gartner and META Group, where he founded and directed CIO analyst services and Human Capital Management and Compensation research practices. He has for the past 14 years led a team of senior analysts and consultants at Foote Partners LLC whose proprietary benchmark research (2,000 research partners, 93,000 IT professionals) and advisory services targeting the ‘execution’ side of IT are used regularly by more than 1,600 private and public sector employers on five continents. A popular featured opinion columnist, podcaster, and frequent contributor to dozens of online, print, radio, and television media sources, Foote’s research-backed analysis and predictions on IT market behavior and workforce trends reach a weekly audience of global business and technology professionals. This session will draw from his firm’s IT Skills and Certifications Pay IndexTM and IT Skills Demand and Pay Trends report series, and from recent interviews with more than 500 IT executives and decision makers on the role of architects in their organizations. 

10:30 - 11:00
Break