Sunday, January 11, 2009

Economic Outlook - Opportunities in the Crisis

When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.

A lot of people would have been happy to see the end of 2008 and would have heralded the advent of 2009 with a bit of trepidation. It’s only human due to the bleak economic situation staring at everyone. I would like you to remember the words of Charles R. Swindoll

“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

First the background for the US market. The IT industry employment was at 3,876,200 which were up 2.1 percent over the past year (Nov.2007 – Nov. 2008) as per the National Association of Computer Consultant Business.

http://www.naccb.org/employment-index/december2008_it_release.pdf

Of the 30 fastest growing employment opportunities in the US, 6 were in the IT related space such as Network and system admin, Systems analysts etc as per US Dept. of Labor. The complete list is available at

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ooh.t01.htm

In a survey carried out for hiring prospects for 2009 , more than 60% felt it would be flat, while the remaining were equally divided amongst those who thought there would be gains and the others who felt that there would be losses.

President Elect Obama is scheduled to take over as President on the 20th of January 2009. To meet the vast economic challenges currently faced, he has plans to provide stimulus to the US economy to create employment to the tune of two million plus jobs. The initial figures being discussed are in the region of $ 700 Billion in federal spending. Information technology applications should stand to benefit immensely from this.

1. Engineering

The single largest new investment in national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s is planned in the US. For such development specialized engineering solutions would be desperately needed. These would be in areas of Computer Aided Design and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to support infrastructure development. Visualization applications would greatly help in reducing costs.

2. Energy Consumption

This is a top priority of President Elect Obama, to reduce energy consumption in Federal establishments. Companies with experience in designing green buildings, renewable energy, can partner US companies.

3. School Education

“We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms. Because to help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools”.

Those computers will require networking solutions, content for CAI, Content Management Solutions as education departments at the local level would use federal funds, but would have decision making abilities.

“It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they’ll get that chance when I’m President – because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world”

There would be increased usage of online learning solutions. Since there is a shortage of trained teaching staff “Distance Tutoring”, Learning Management Solutions should find enhanced demand.

4. Library and Medical Services

“In addition to connecting our libraries and schools to the internet, we must also ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the internet.”

These functions would require increased digitization of content and other outsourced services.

Over and above President Elect Obama’s stated vision for the stimulus, would be enhanced development to fulfill new legislation which is bound to be introduced.

New Legislation in the BFSI segment would force companies to upgrade technology and redo programming, much as the Sarbanes Oxley act after financial Irregularities in 2002. Some of these changes would be on the lines of the Glass-Steagall Act (GSA) of 1933. This act demarcated the functioning of commercial banking and Investment banking. The GSA had been repealed by legislation called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) in 1999. The large number of mergers would necessitate seamless integration of technology platforms which would create newer job opportunities.

The above are just some of the opportunities which will be arising in the near future. I would like you to remember the following words of Orison Swett Marden

“Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them.”

1 comment:

Larry said...

These are a lot of great ideas and they have the potential to stimulate economic growth in the long run. I don't think they'll have much of an impact in short run though.

First of all these are all programs in theory. Then Congress will need to pass legislation authorizing the programs. There will be many details to work out, especially around security and privacy around medical records. Once that's done, then the agencies in the executive branch will need to do the hard work of figuring out how to put the programs into practice. They may need to seek public comment, which is typcially 90 days.

Let'ts be optimistic and say this will take 4-6 months. Then you the private sector needs to get involved and actually do the work, this will take at least a couple of months.

Will there be a bump up in stock prices as a result? Probably, but it will be mostly on speculation at this point. It's a guessing game about who is likely to be a winner. What may happen is a number of stocks go up on speculation. Those that end up realizing the victories won't have any room to go up and those that didn't will get crushed by the fleeing speculators.