The Roundup: Pay Rising for Many IT Certifications

Pay Tied to IT Certifications, Skills Still Rising
A quarterly research report from Foote Partners LLC finds that bonus premium pay tied to many IT certifications and skills continues to rise, despite the poor economic climate.

The New Caanan, Conn., research and advisory firm reports in its third quarter Hot Technical Skills and Certifications Pay Index that overall skills-bonus pay for 53 certifications has risen 8% since the end of last year, to a median 8.6% of base salary. One-third of that growth occurred in the "very active" third quarter. The HTSCPI assessed the skills and pay of 29,300 IT professionals at 1,840 employers in North America and Europe.

Driving the growth are certifications relating to security, database, applications development and programming languages, as well as webmaster/internetworking, which have increased in value between 3% and 9% in the last three months, despite the poor economy.

The highest paying certification continues to be for the Project Management Professional, says David Foote, president and chief research officer of Foote Partners. "The PMP is ideal for managing complexity and risk, for predicting outcomes, and for repeating what works. In this business environment, we predict even greater demand and higher pay for this certification," he says.

Other findings of the third-quarter report:

• Premium pay for 82 technical skills has been flat through 2001, averaging nearly 9% of base pay at the median, off 16% from the same quarter last year.
• Database and web/e-commerce skills rose 5% over the second quarter following steep declines in late 2000.
• Applications development tools and language skills pay grew the most in the past quarter, up 9% (to 8.8% of base pay), led by the continued dominance of rapid application development skills, the highest paying of all skills premiums in the survey, earning a median 20% of base pay. Also high paying: project-related security skills (18% of base pay).
• "Employers are more reluctant this year to pay large skills bonuses to junior staff or inexperienced workers, to those not well-matched to priority projects, and others whose return on investment is not assured," says Foote.
• Available funds for skills and certifications premium pay have grown 3.5% this year, and are being directed to upper echelon or "impact" IT workers.
• There will be more emphasis on team- and project-based skills pay in the next 12-24 months as budgets undergo case-by-case scrutiny to focus resources on projects that produce tangible, near-term benefits.

Anthrax leads to surge in e-billing activity
The recent anthrax scare is driving many consumers and billers to use e-billing services as they avoid traditional mail, according to a report by Gartner. According to the Stamford, Conn., IT research firm, by the end of 2001, 32 million U.S. residents will view credit card and other statements online, an increase of 60% over the 20 million who were doing it at the end of 2000. The number is expected to double to 64 million by year-end 2003.

Gartner says online billing's popularity has been steadily growing, but it has been hastened by the anthrax scares. Since the anthrax began turning up in the U.S. mail last month, Gartner clients say consumer enrollment in such billing programs has increased 20%. Options for such service include a range of "e-bill aggregation" services from banks, brokerages and portals like AOL, Yahoo, and Quicken.com, as well as direct billing on the Web sites of credit card companies and others.

"World phone" use expanding
A pair of trends -increases in international travel and the demand of professionals for constant communications- is resulting in a booming demand for world phones, according to Cahners In-State Group of Scottsdale, Ariz. By 2005, the total number of world phone subscribers will reach about 91 million, it says.

This "global roaming" trend is driving every major wireless phone maker to offer a world phone among their equipment. Roaming charges to international travelers will hit $29 billion in 2005, the research firm predicts.

A surprise in the report: only one in four world phone users are traveling for business.

XP Launch Falls Short of Windows 98
Retailers in the United States sold more than 300,000 copies of the professional and home editions of Windows XP during the three-day period following its official launch, according to NPD Intelect, a research firm in Port Washington, N.Y.

Initial retail unit sales of Windows XP during Oct. 25 to 27 surpassed those recorded for Windows Millenium Edition (Me) in the three-day period after its release in September 2000, but fell short of volumes recorded for Windows 98 during the comparable period after its launch in September 1998. During the first three days of its availability, retail sales of Windows Me were slightly above 200,000 units, NPD Intelect found. In the same period following its launch, sales of Windows 98 approached 400,000 units.

According to statistics compiled by StatMarket, Windows XP's global usage share had risen to 2.36 percent as of Nov. 5. Microsoft's Windows 98 is currently the leading operating system on the Web, accounting for about half of all OS versions worldwide, according to StatMarket. Windows 98 surpassed its predecessor, Windows 95, in April 1999, less than a year after its release.

- This item from CyberAtlas, an internet.com site.