This is my 30,000 foot look at events in the ICT industry for April 2013. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of April in previous years …

Five years ago in April 2008 STMicroelectronics and NXP merged to create a $3 Billion chip company.  IBM was busy, making three smaller acquisitions this month Diligent, FilesX and InfoDyne; Yahoo bought Tensa Kft. Despite the attentions of Microsoft; and speaking of Microsoft they had a couple of acquisitions Farecast and Komoku;  EMC also had a couple of forays into the M&A market with Iomega and Conchango plc.  In April 2009 Oracle entered the hardware business with its $7.4 Billion purchase of Sun!  EBay paid $1.2 billion for Gmarket (a Korean EBay), Harris Corp paid $675 million for Tyco Electronic wireless division and Tech Mahindra paid $422 million for Satyam.  In April 2010 HP paid $1.2 Billion in the somewhat surprising purchase of Palm; Twitter bought a couple of companies, Cloudhopper and Atebits.  Symantec also bought a couple of companies (PGP ($300 Million) and GuardianEdge ($70 Million).  Oracle paid $685 Million for Phase Forward, Juniper paid about $100 Million for Ankeena Networks and Salesforce bought Jigsaw for $142 Million.  Two years ago in April 2011 Texas Instruments bought National Semiconductor for $6.5 billion, Level 3 Communications paid $3 Billion for Global Crossing, Lawson Software was sold for $2 Billion to GGC Software Holdings (an Infor company) and Seagate bought the hard disk drive operations of Samsung to become one of the two largest players in that space.  Last year in April 2012 Facebook made a $1 billion bid for Instagram, Facebook also bought a piece of the patent action from Microsoft after Microsoft had paid AOL more than $1 billion for the patents.  DELL made three acquisitions this month, Wyse technology, Clerity Solutions and Make Technologies.  IBM picked up Toronto based BI company Varicent Software; Intel paid $140 million for some assets from Cray; Citrix picked up Podio; and Twitter bought a startup to acquire its team of developers.

Which brings us back to the present …

April 2013 saw some interesting M&A activity with Rogers paying $200 million for Primus’s Blackiron subsidiary, including datacenter capability; Toronto based Softchoice also chose to go private in a $412 million private equity deal; Shaw paid $225 million for an Enmax fibre network subsidiary in Calgary; Best Buy sold its stake in Carphone Warehouse for $775 million (having paid $2.1 billion in 2008).  Google has spent $291 million on acquisitions in the first quarter including a $30 million purchase of social company Wavii.  Oter big names on the acquisition trail this month include Intel (Mashery), IBM (Urbancode); Computer Associates (Nolio).  Finally Facebook had a couple of small acquisitions Osmeta and Parse.

In other news this month Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program received some bad press and subsequent changes, Ray Lane stepped down from HP’s board and IBM is investing $1 billion in flash data technology.  PC shipments were down more than 11% year over year, smartphones however are up 30% with Samsung enjoying good growth.  China was identified as the number one source of malicious computer attacks with the US second.

The economic indicators were mixed, with confidence up in Canada despite an increase in the unemployment rate and lost jobs.  There were a number of positive indicators out of the US including increases in jobs, GDP, CEO confidence and the leading economic index.  E&Y also suggested 90% of US executives viewed the global economy as improved or stable.

That is it for my look at what was happening in the technology space over the last month, compared to the same month in previous years.  I’ll be back at the end of May, until then … walk fast and smile!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?  Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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This is a little earlier than normal … I head out on vacation this evening and will be gone for a little more than a week.  Enjoy the break!

This is my 30,000 foot look at events in the ICT industry for March 2013. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of March in previous years …

Five years ago, in March 2008 Microsoft announced three separate deals (one reputedly in the $100Million range); the biggest deal of the month was AOL’s $850 Million purchase of social networking company Bebo; Acer paid $290 Million for E-Ten and Synopsis paid $227 Million for another semiconductor company Synplicity.  In March 2009 Google was in the news for creating a $100 Million venture fund. Bell Canada bought “the Source” and the break-up of BearingPoint, post Chapter 11, benefited Deloitte and PwC amongst others around the world.  March 2010 saw a continuation of the economic recovery.  It was a quiet month for M&A activity with CA’s pursuit of the “cloud computing” world providing some activity with its two purchases, 3Tera for about $90 million and Nimsoft for $350 million.  Chordiant was bought by Pegasytems for a little over $160 million, and the other notable purchase was Avnet’s $340 million buy, Bell Microproducts.   Two years ago in March 2011 world events included Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear woes.  The big technology event of the month was AT&T’s announcement of a $39 Billion deal to buy T-Mobile … which later failed costing AT&T a reputed $4 billion.  While there were no other mega-deals of this nature it was a fairly busy month in the M&A world.  Montreal’s Radian6 was snapped up by Salesforce.com for about $276 milion; Facebook made a couple of acquisitions in the mobile space Snaptu and Beluga; YouTube paid about $50 milion for Next New Networks;  McAfee bought database security firm Sentrigo; Cisco bought portal company newScale; Teradata bought data analytics startup Aster data … a continuation of the consolidation in the red hot data space;  and OpenText bought a mobile app development tool vendor WeComm.  In March 2012 there was some activity with a couple of young companies receiving significant capital Appirio ($60 million) and Hootsuite ($20 million).  Cisco made a couple of acquisitions, paying a wopping $5 billion for video software and content company NDS Group in addition to a smaller network management buy, ClearAccess.  NEC paid $450 million for the information management business of Convergys and Avaya paid $230 million for an Israeli videoconferenceing and telepresence company Radvision.  Other companies on the acquisition trail were DELL, EMC, SafeNet, Avnet and The Utility Company.  Finally, SAIC agreed to pay close to a half billion dollars to the City of New York related to charges it overbilled and paid kickbacks!

Which brings us back to the present …

March 2013 continued a trend for the first quarter of 2013 with a fairly lackluster M&A market.  Some of the usual characters were making acquisitions, but there were no billion dollar deals announced.  Oracle continued its move into the telco space with the purchase of Tekelec; Google bought a small Toronto Uiversity based company DNNresearch in the machine learning vertical; Microsoft sold a division to Facebook … Atlas Advertiser Suite will assist Facebook clients in managing marketing campaigns; Yahoo made its 5^th small acquisition, this one Summly, was founded by a 15 year old two years ago (he was born after Yahoo was started).  There were a couple more smaller deals but it was interesting to see both the Ontario Provincial government and the Canadian federal government getting more active in funding startups!

Outside of the M&A activity, both IDC and Gartner are predicting growth in the IT markets for 2013 … somewhere between 4% and 6%.  There were also a number of indicators that the economy is improving, added jobs in both Canada and the US, there were several positive confidence indices, some increase in small business employment and a continued increase in US tech jobs.  Microsoft ran into some difficulties in the EU, having to pay a $732 million antitrust fine related to Internet Explorer.  Final word goes to Evernote who suffered a security breach affecting 50 million users.

That is it for my look at what was happening in the technology space over the last month, compared to the same month in previous years.  I’ll be back at the end of April, until then … walk fast and smile!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?  Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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Every now and then I write about certain aspects of the staffing industry.  Today I will talk about who pays for our services … and it is always the client.

Staffing agencies are the number one way for people to find work.  If you are looking for a full time job, for a temporary gig or if you are an independent contractor then likely you are going to find your next role through the staffing industry … and you should never have to pay for that right to work.

If you are a temporary employee in Ontario, Bill 139 made it illegal for an agency to charge you a fee to work … whether that is to find you a job or some kind of fee tied to working, section 74.8 of the Employment Standards Act explains.

Elsewhere, even if there is no legislation, both of Canada’s largest staffing industry associations have Codes of Conduct covering this subject … and both have Ethics Committees that will rule in cases where the codes might be broken.  (This is a valuable asset and a great reason why clients should only work with members of the industry association).

The Association of Canadian Search Employment and Staffing Services (ACSESS) is Canada’s largest staffing industry association.  Their Code of Ethics states … We will derive income only from clients and make no direct or indirect charges to candidates or employees unless specified by a license.

The National Association of Computer Consulting Businesses (NACCB) Canada represents the “professional” staffing companies.  Its Business Principles state … NACCB Canada members will derive income only from clients and make no direct or indirect charges to candidates unless specified by a license.

Everyone has a right to work and staffing agencies earn their fees from their clients who receive the many benefits of a flexible workforce.  IF you are ever asked to pay a fee to a staffing agency which is not voluntary then you might want to consider whether (a) it is legal, or (b) is it ethically in accordance with the Industry Association Codes of Ethics.  Your options then would be to contact the industry associations for advice and support.  Here is a link to the Board of Directors at ACSESS … and a link to the Board of Directors at NACCB.

Canada’s Staffing industry provide their clients access to a flexible and talented workforce, and the industry provides individuals with a myriad of job opportunities.  Credible staffing companies operate under a strict code of conduct so I would encourage all organizations to ensure your suppliers belong to the industry association and all job seekers to work with credible companies, who abide by the industry codes of conduct.

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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This is my 30,000 foot look at events in the ICT industry for February 2013. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of previous year’s Februarys …

Five years ago in February 2008 Nortel was still announcing layoffs, and the news centred around economic uncertainty.  Four years ago in February 2009 the news was ALL about layoffs and economic uncertainty.  Nortel, in addition to their layoffs sold their Alteon asset for less than $18 million, which they had bought for $7 billion nine years previously!  In February 2010 M&A activity was slow with no huge buys.  Google bought Aardvark; Oracle purchased a couple of smaller entities; IBM bought a small network software company that focuses on the telco vertical; and Sybase bought a company that has a strong foothold in the financial services vertical.  There were lots of signs that the recovery was under way and Canada saw some job growth after a period of decline.  February 2011 was another quiet month for M&A with HP buying Vertica; Opentext bought Metastorm ($182 million); and Rackspace acquired Anso Labs.  World news was dominated by the popular uprisings in a growing number of countries and the reactions of those governments including the brutality of Gaddafi’s Libyan supporters.  February 2012 was not a blockbuster month for M&A, but there was some interesting activity.  The biggest deal of the month saw Oracle pay $1.9 billion for talent management company Taleo.  Siemens Canada paid $440 million for networking equipment company Rugged.com.  IBM bought BYOD company Worklight; Dell bought backup and recovery company AppAssure; Apple bought mobile search company Chomp; and LM Ericsson bought Ottawa based BelAir Networks.

Which brings us back to the present …

February 2013 saw Dell go private in a $24.4 billion deal, that included a $2 billion investment by Microsoft.  Oracle paid $1.7 billion for networking company Acme Packet Inc.; Rackspace bought big data company ObjectRocket; Telus was busy with two acquisitions, electronic medical records division of the Canadian Medical Association and digital forensics company Digital Wyzdom; HP also sold the Palm operating system to LG, for their smart TVs.

A couple of reports about venture capitalism in Canada were positive, one suggesting Canada is third in the world for activity, behind only the US and UK.  The second report suggests investment is on pace for a strong year.  Both are good news in an environment where entrepreneurs bemoan the lack of available funding in Canada.

In other news, the hacker regroup Anonymous continues to make political statements with hacks in the US government and the financial services industry.  This month they posted details of 4,000 American bank executives.  Here in Canada a backlash against new internet legislation saw the cancelling of Bill C-30 because of privacy concerns.  Canadian employment fell in January, but in that interesting statistical world the unemployment rate also fell to 7%.   There were several positive indicators in the US economy including a growth in GDP, increase in IT jobs, and a couple of indexes showing increased confidence.

That is it for my monthly look at what was happening in the technology space over the last month, compared to the same month in previous years.  I’ll be back at the end of March, until then … walk fast and smile!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?  Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
—————————————————————————————————————————————–

This is my 30,000 foot look at events in the ICT industry for January 2013. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of previous year’s Januarys …

Five years ago in January 2008, there was much talk about an impending recession.  Dell, Palm and Yahoo all announced layoffs, while Oracle paid $8.5 Billion for BEA, Microsoft paid $1.2 Billion for FAST and SUN paid $1 Billion for MySQL.  In January 2009 the world’s economies melted down! The one sizeable M&A deal was the $775 million purchase of Interwoven by Autonomy.  Confidence with IT workers and CEOs alike was at an all time low, and there was a long list of (significant) companies announcing layoffs.  Satyam announced a major financial accounting scam and former Canadian “tech star” Nortel, filed for bankruptcy protection.  Three Januarys ago in Twenty-Ten there was cautious optimism in the air, but not much in the way of blockbuster M&A deals however Oracle, Apple, EMC, and Cisco continued their fairly steady acquisition pace.  Perhaps the most interesting acquisition saw PWC here in Canada return to the IT consulting business with the acquisition of Allstream’s non-telecom consulting business, several years after exiting the business by selling it to IBM.  In other news Apple released the much anticipated iPad.  In January 2011 economic news was generally positive, Steve Jobs announced his leave of absence from Apple and Larry Page assumed the CEO role at Google.  There were also some big M&A deals, the largest being the $3.1 Billion acquisition of Atheros Communications by Qualcomm.  Verizon paid $1.4 Billion for Teremark Worldwide and IGate paid $1.2 Billion for Patni Computer Systems.  Also out spending money were Dell, Google, Cisco and Salesforce.com. Things were very quiet in M&A last year in January 2012.  Former tech giant JDSU was back on the acquisition trail, even if just to pick up a small Vancouver based company, Dyaptive Systems.  Symantec paid $115 million for LiveOffice to help with its storage capabilities, Google bought a bunch more IBM patents, and Xerox picked up Laser Networks in the managed printing space.  Rim also announced its change of leadership. 

Which brings us back to the present …

January 2013 was a big month for Canadian darling Research in Motion with the long awaited release of its next generation PDA and associated software.  The company also changed its name to Blackberry.  Early reviews were generally positive, the proof however will require the recapture of significant market share.

In M&A activity Cisco was busy picking up yet another Israeli company, mobile network software company Intucell for $475 million.  Cisco is investing heavily in Israel, with this being its 10^th acquisition there in the last 12 years.  Cisco also sold its Linksys division to Belkin.  The biggest dollar value deal was AT&T’s purchase of some of Verison Wireless’s airwaves for $1.9 Billion.  Other deals saw NCR buy video software ASTM company uGenius Technology; Canon Canada acquired long-time partner and document management company Oce Canada; NetSuite bought retail management systems company Retail Anywhere; and AVI-SPL bought Duocom-Duologik.  The Canadian Federal Government also released details about how it would make $400 million available for startups.

Speaking of Federal Government departments HRSDC ran into data leak problems for the second time in just a few months, losing a portable hard drive with 585,000 personal records.  Apple also did some house cleaning of suppliers identifying and cutting ties with companies supplying child labour.

Economic indicators continue to be mixed … how long have we been saying that now?  In December Canada’s job situation was decent gaining 40,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dropping 0.1% to 7.1%.  A BMO survey also showed some optimism among Canadians about hiring plans. The US released January labour data that was generally positive, other than the unemployment rate rose from 7.8% to 7.9%.  Over in the UK the number of people out of work dropped in the September to November quarter by 37,000 and the unemployment rate dropped to 7.7% which is down 0.7% from a year ago.  The ILO released a report suggesting global unemployment rose in 2012 after two years going the other way, with 197 million people unemployed globally.

I would have to characterize January as “more of the same” that we have been seeing for some time now.  One of these months I will be talking about the buoyant economy, but until then … Walk Fast and Smile!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
—————————————————————————————————————————————–

General Observations:

From a job market perspective, the fourth quarter of 2012 here in Canada was very similar to the rest of 2012 … decent performance, but not booming.  The Canadian economy continued to perform well in comparison to other countries but we are by no means seeing a boom as we are affected by lagging economies around the world.  The TSX is one interesting indicator of how Canada’s economy is faring and in 2012 we saw it hit lows around 10,800 and with a reading of 12,700 as I write, the index is as high as it was at any point in 2012.  Other good news in December saw Canada add 40,000 jobs, resulting in 312,000 more jobs since December 2011, and hit a four year low unemployment rate of 7.1%.

After a fairly robust year in Western Canada, November and December slowed down fairly significantly.  With the price of a barrel of oil currently above $94, the Western Canada economy remains a strong job market.  Busy oil companies means that the companies serving that sector also benefit, which includes the governments that collect those tax dollars, creating opportunity there too.  The demand for people has not yet returned to pre-recession levels, but a strong Canadian dollar, uncertainty in world markets and political influences (Keystone decision in the US, environmental pressures, Middle East upheaval etc.) are probably the biggest factor there.  The gas industry remains depressed due to low natural gas prices, which means that there is no great demand for people in this sector.   Should all of those factors align in the future we would see the current “skills gap” become a full on labour shortage in Western Canada specifically.  Here at Eagle we were surprised to see client demand reduce by half in the last couple of months in 2012, but demand seems to have picked up again in January.  By way of explanation there were 13 changes at the CEO/CIO level in Calgary alone during Q4, plus several companies experienced fairly significant downsizing.  These events will cause disruption in hiring but we expect projects to get going and demand to increase early in 2013.

The banking sector has been very strong in 2012 and finished the year in that mode.  There is strong demand across the banks for skilled resources as they develop new systems for regulatory and competitive reasons, improve operations and integrate acquisitions.  This demand is created at head office locations, so these jobs are typically in Toronto, and to a lesser but still significant degree, Montreal.

The telecommunications sector is a very competitive one and all the telcos have been busy investing in new services and products, in addition to ensuring their infrastructure is sound.  This has created significant job opportunities, with Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal the markets that have most benefitted.

The construction industry continues to create huge demands for people.  The number of busy construction sites across the major cities is a clear indicator, but there is also the restoration/renovation work driving demand as anyone who has tried to find tradespeople will know.  The trades remain a great opportunity for people thinking about a career, or even a career change.

Federal, provincial and municipal governments will always have a need for people.  The current climate of cost cutting, revisiting budgets, scrutiny from auditors and watchdogs makes it a tougher environment than in previous years.  Governments have been avoiding the “mega projects” for a few years, but some of the coming initiatives will create opportunities.  Shared services initiatives, public/private partnerships and creative privatisation projects will come back to the fore and this will be an area of opportunity … perhaps as early as 2013.

Canada, like the rest of the world, was expecting to be dealing with the effects of a retiring “boomer” population by now.  The recession and the weakness in the stock markets put retirement plans on hold for many, so we have not yet seen a mass exodus from the workforce.  These phenomena will happen and will be a factor in the job market in the coming months and years.

Canada’s staffing industry is an excellent barometer of the health of our economy and the Canadian Staffing Index reflects the strength of our job sector.  This index was trending up through the year and reached a record high in October (125), but slipped back to a still good reading of 118 in November.  This index measures the hours worked by staffing industry workers each month.

More Specifically:

The GTA (Greater Toronto Area) is the hottest job market in Canada.  It is home to the highest number of head offices, it is Canada’s major financial center and with a population of around 6 million it has the largest available workforce.  If I was looking for work, this is the region I would be looking in and I would concentrate my attentions on the Financial, telecommunications, construction and service industries.

Despite the fact that Calgary’s population is little more than 1 million, it is the second busiest market for jobs and the engine of Western Canada.   The oil revenues spill into other cities, notably Regina but also Edmonton where provincial government benefits from the associated taxes.  The West generically is a good place to be looking for work, particularly if you are willing to endure a little hardship in places like Fort McMurray.

Eagle’s Eastern Canada region covers Ottawa, Montreal and “the Maritimes”.  There are definite signs that Ottawa is starting to pick up in demand after a long slow period that included downsizing, layoffs, spending freezes and general malaise in that Federal Government environment.  Montreal continues to be busy and there are jobs to be had, again with particular emphasis on the financial sector, the telcos and the construction industry.  There is also some demand in St John’s, NFLD(population about 200,000), and in Halifax (approx. 400,000) but everything is relative and they are not big markets.

 Summary:

2012 was not a boom year for jobs in Canada, however from a numbers perspective finished well, with a four year low unemployment rate of 7.1%, and having added 312,000 jobs over the 12 months.  Eagle saw a significant downturn in demand at the end of the year, but this seems to be picking up again mid-way through January.

The hot cities in Canada are Toronto (GTA) and Calgary, with Edmonton, Regina and Montreal good places to be looking for work too and while Ottawa has been slow, we are seeing hopeful signs there for 2013.  The hot industries are banking, insurance, construction, telecommunications and the sectors that serve those industries.  The sector that is not hiring at its normal pace would be government, but again that might be changing…

In the hotter markets we are seeing clear skills shortages and the “in demand” people are receiving multiple job offers, giving them the ability to “pick and choose”.  So … IF you are looking for people and want to hire the best talent here are some things you should consider:

(a) Start the process early with a strong PLANNING phase;

(b) Develop very clean processes to find, screen, choose, hire and onboard these new resources (if you drag out the hiring process you WILL lose);

(c) Know that you will have a lot of competition and therefore speed in decision making will be critical;

(d) The job doesn’t stop there … retention becomes the next challenge!

That was my quarterly look at the Canadian job market and some of its influences.

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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The staffing industry is a huge contributor to our economy, supplying the most important asset for any company … talent!  Whether it is the new CEO placed through an executive search firm, the contract auditor for your new line of business, a team of experts brought in for an IT project or the extra labour needed on the shop floor at peak times, the staffing industry give our clients access to the people they need, when they need them.

Given the importance of our role in the economy and our ability to bring real value to our clients it is very possible for us to establish a “trusted business partner” relationship with our clients.  The only way to do that is by stepping up your game in these four areas: (a) Delivery; (b) Relationships; (c) Customer Service; and (d) Brand.

1.  Delivery.  Being able to find the easier candidates is not enough … in a world where skills and labour shortages will return soon, we need to have a well oiled delivery machine.  Our clients need to know that we will deliver for them … and we can only get to that point by proving it, again and again.  A well oiled machine will know where the talent is, will have relationships with the type of people our client will need, will have partnerships with niche players who can step in when needed, will be using the latest tools, the latest processes and will be constantly training their people to be the best in the business.

2.  Relationships.  Our discussions with our clients cannot be centred on “orders”.  We need to bring value to the table … we need to be able to provide market intelligence; we need to be at the forefront of, and involved in, industry issues around professionalism, ethics and regulatory matters; we need to be involved in the political issues affecting our industry … immigration, education & training of the future workforce; we need to be knowledgeable about the changing demographics and future workplaces.  We need to bring intelligence to our clients to help them plan their future talent strategies.  

Sidebar:  There is a strange trend in our industry where some people suggests suppliers should not talk to their clients … that is the true path to commodity staffing.  How can we bring value if we can’t understand our clients’ business needs?  How can we supply the right people if we don’t know the nuances of the role?  How can we educate our clients about the big picture if we can’t talk to them?  It is impossible to get a decent (never mind great) job order through a tool! 

3.  Customer Service.  We need to set client expectations correctly … even when the messages are tough!  We need to keep them informed through the process.  We need to be responsive.  We need to always remember the bigger picture.  We need to be cognisant of their pressures and solve their business issues as much as we can.  We need to constantly be looking to bring value … not just fill orders (and especially not just the “low hanging fruit”).

4.  Brand.  This will be a strange one to many in our industry … but I firmly believe that good companies want to deal with good companies.  I define a good company as one that is obviously good at its core business … but there are many more qualities to a good company.  They are a good corporate citizen, giving back to their communities; they treat their people well; are active in industry associations; are a recognised “thought leader” in their field; are committed to quality; strive for excellence; innovate and grow; are Customer focused; professional and a leader.  In order to build a strong relationship with a client like that, and differentiate from your competition you need to build a brand like that!

As the boomer generation retire, the economy picks up and the demand for knowledge workers creates significant skills (and labour) shortages the staffing industry has the opportunity to be a big part of the solution … if we can realise our potential, the sky is the limit!

Above are four areas that every staffing company needs to address in their future strategic planning … get it right and we increase our importance to our clients and even more importantly to the economies in which we operate.

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?   Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
—————————————————————————————————————————————–

This is my 30,000 foot look at events in the ICT industry for December 2012. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of previous year’s Decembers …

IT news in December can be slow.  Five years ago, in December 2007 the big deal was in the gaming space with Warcraft maker Vivendi Games merging with Activision in a $9.85 Billion creation of a new gaming entity, there were a number of other deals but nothing huge.  In December 2008 the poor economy was the big news.  Sony, Yahoo, Adobe, Nokia and AT&T all announced layoffs.  Mass layoff numbers were up and various studies were cautious about hiring plans for 2009.  On the M&A front the biggest deal involved a couple of private equity companies buying a Danish IT company (KMD) for $375 million; Sierra Wireless paid $277 million for Wavecom; and Wipro paid $127 million for the IT arm of Citigroup.  In December 2009 there were no big announcements … Microsoft had a couple of smaller (by their standards) acquisitions focused on different verticals, Opalis for the data centre business and Sentillion for the Health Care world.  Google made a small acquisition (AppJet) and IBM added database security vendor Guardium.  Two years ago in December 2010 there was probably more activity than previous Decembers.  Dell made two storage acquisitions, Compellent Technologies ($820 million) and Insite one.  Siemens and Atos Origin formed a new European IT outsourcing company in a deal worth more than $1 billion.  J2 global Communications bought (Ottawa based) Protus IP Solutions ($213 million); Juniper Networks bought Altor networks for $95 million; Salesforce.com bought a software development platform Ruby from Heroku for $212 million; Earthlink paid $370 million for One Communications; BMC Software bought GridApp Systems; and L&T infotech established a significant Canadian presence through the acquisition of Citigroup’s IT outsourcing arm.  Last year in December 2011 Ottawa’s March Networks was snapped up by Infinova Canada for $90 million, and Toronto based Rypple was acquired by Salesforce.com!  the BIG deal was SAP’s $3.4 billion purchase of SuccessFactors, who had also announced they were buying Jobs2Web for $110 milion.  It was IBM that was the most active acquirer of the month, paying $440 million for DemandTec, also picking up Emptoris in the procurement world and Irish company Curam Software in the government sector.

Which brings us back to the present …

December 2012 saw a fair amount of M&A activity with Oracle making two acquisitions, marketing automation company Eloqua ($871 million) and Dataraker which provides analytics for utilities companies.  The big deal of the month saw Sprint pay $2.2 Billion to take full control of cellular competitor Clearwire.   Montreal based Cogeco continues to build out its data centre capability, paying $635 million for Peer 1 Networks and NCR paid $635 million for retail software and services company Retalix.  In the BYOD space Citrix has bought mobile device management company Zenprise for $355 million.  Finally, Redknee added 1200 employees and 130 new clients through the purchase of Nokia Siemens Business Support Network.

Economic and labour market news was generally pessimistic around the world, although Canada continues to have decent data, the US news seemed relatively positive.  There were other pockets of good news in places like Ireland and non-EU European countries, however the general message was gloom around the globe, including India, which has previously been a positive story.

So ends 2012, a year that was expected to bring economic recovery but failed to deliver.  Let’s hope 2013 is a better year for the world’s economies … Happy New Year!

Until next month, Walk Fast and Smile!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?  Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge! Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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I recently read that there is a growing trend of people choosing to work for them-self.  The most likely form of doing this is as an independent contractor … and given the business I am in, I get to meet a lot of these people.

The independent contractor is sometimes viewed with suspicion by regulatory bodies like the tax people (CRA), Worker’s compensation etc.  I have written previously about the value that independent contractors bring to our economy, but I thought it might be worthwhile describing some of the many reasons people choose to be contractors … because I can assure you in most cases it has nothing to do with paying less tax.

There are a number of fields where contractors are more established, the technology world, the engineering world and the construction industry are just three … focusing on those worlds, here are some reasons why people become independent contractors:

1.  Control.   I belive that the number one reason people choose to be contractors is freedom of choice.  They are typically accomplished at their job and they want the ability to choose what projects they work on, who they work with and where they work … none of which is available to an employee.

2.  Career.  This is very big in technical worlds like IT and engineering.  The traditional career path sees people who are excellent technically get pushed out of their technical jobs and into management positions.  Their role changes from 80% technical challenges, 20% people issues (because they still manage teams, interface with clients and suppliers etc) to become an 80% people management role and a 20% technical role (the 20% coming in the time after 5pm!)  The traditional path doesn’t work for everyone … contracting allows people to earn good money AND stay technical.

3.  A Way to Build a Company.  Some of Canada’s largest technology companies (and I have to believe many construction companies) started with a contractor or a group of contractors.  Cognos, Calian, CGI, Systemhouse all come to mind.  If a contractor wants to start their own company, then becoming an independent contractor allows them flexibility to work on that plan, teaches them basic business skills as a one person company and allows them to nurture future partner relationships.

4.  Travel.  Having the flexibility to move to where the work is can be a necessity in a tough economy, and some people come to love it.  As a contractor with good skills you can move to where the interesting jobs are … working in warmer or even exotic climates is not out of the question.

5.  Company Politics.  Many organizations experience internal politics, in-fighting and positioning amongst employees.  One of the nice things about being a contractor is the ability to just focus on the job and not get caught up in the politics.

6.  Necessity.  Even the best people can find themselves out of work in a tough economy.  Employers are less likely to increase their permanent headcount during this time too, so contracting is a great alternative for people with the right skills.

7.  Money.  An independent contractor can make more money than an employee in a similar role, but they have to accept the associated risks too.  They only make more money if they can stay fully billable, they are responsible for their own skills development, marketing and benefits (no pensions plans for the self employed).  Having said all that there is “an upside” to their income that is not always available to an employee.

8.  Part Time Work.  For some people who are nearing retirement the ability to pick and choose how much they work, where they work and the types of work they will do is very desirable.  They might not be quite ready for retirement, they might have other things they want to do with their time or they might just need to supplement their income.  There is always a demand for people with good skills and this is a way to work without a commitment to full-time work.

I don’t know what the percentage of the work force is self employed, but it is a definitely a small percentage.  They are a part of Canada’s small business community, offer our economy a flexible labour pool and bring a ton of value to their clients.   They might be the genesis of Canada’s next large companies or just the labour force that will help our economy through the coming labour shortages.

It is the right career choice for some, but the majority of people still prefer traditional employment … and that works out just fine all around.

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Gain a competitive edge!  Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Find Canada’s top hot jobs, updated in real-time!  Visit Eagle’s Job Centre!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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This is my 30,000 foot look at events in the ICT industry for November 2012. What you see here is a précis of the monthly report I produce, which will be available in more detail at the News section of the Eagle website, where you will also find back issues.

A Little History of previous year’s Novembers …

November 2007 was an active M&A market with IBM paying $5 Billion for Cognos, Telus buying Emergis and Randstad buying Vedior (to create the second largest staffing company in the world).  In November 2008 the big news was the economic maelstrom that took the world by storm.  There was some M&A activity with AT&T paying $944 Million for Centenial Communications and Fujitsu paid $575 Million to buy out Siemens from a joint venture but the biggest “noise” was about layoffs and the general impact of the recession.  Two years ago in November 2009 there was still a “hangover” from the recession, but the general mood was more optimistic.  There were still layoff announcements, Adobe (680), Microsoft (800), and Rogers (900) all announced layoffs and Right Management told us that as many as 80% of employees may look to change job as the economy recovers!   The big news in M&A saw HP buying 3-Com for $2.7 Billion and Nortel continued to sell off its assets, this time its Metro Ethernet Networks business to Cienna for $769 Million.  Google also made a couple of acquisitions, including paying $750 million for AdMob.  In November Twenty-Ten perennial acquirer EMC paid $2.25 billion for Isilion; Attachmate bought Novell for $2.2 Billion; Oracle paid $1 Billion for Art Technology Group; NTT paid $1 Billion for Keane; Amazon paid $500 million for Quidsi; and Juniper Networks bought Trapeze Networks for $152 million.  In November 2011 Mosaid was sold to Sterling partners for $590 million, ending a WiLan hostile takeover attempt.  Japanese company Rakuten paid $315 million for e-book company Kobo; Huawei technologies bought Symantec out of a storage and security joint venture to the tune of $530 million; Yahoo paid $270 million for online advertising company Interclick; and Best Buy paid $167 million for internet technology company Mindshift.

Which brings us back to the present …

November 2012 saw a slight increase in M&A activity over the previous three months, although Cisco alone might account for that with two significant “buys” cloud infrastructure company Meraki ($1.2B) and cloud datacentre and software company Cloupia ($125M).  There were some other big names out with the cheque books this month … Dell bought software tools company Gale Technologies, NCR bought retail software company Retalix ($650M), Cray bought software company Appro ($25M) and Sprint Nextel bought a chunk of US Cellular ($480M).  Locally, Toronto based NexJ (headed by another ex-Andersen Consulting alumni) bought Broadstreet for $8.2 million.

Unemployment remains a concern in most parts of the planet and Canada continues to be comparatively better off with a 7.4% unemployment rate, which remains steady from September.  The US is showing some positive signs with IT job growth most months in the last year and up 2.8 % year over year, in addition the US economy added 158,000 non-farm jobs in October and consumer confidence is up.  Europe on the other hand reached a record high unemployment rate of 10.7% in October.  Still lots of bad news there, but there were some positive signs from the UK and Ireland.

In other news Paul Otellini, another industry veteran, announced he will be stepping down at Intel after 7 years as CEO.  Apple and HTC buried the hatchet on their bitter patent battle, and came out with partnering opportunities!  Final word goes to the demise of the Lotus name, which will soon be retired by IBM.  Until next month, Walk Fast and Smile!

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Kevin Dee is CEO of Eagle (a Professional Staffing Company)
Want to know where Canada’s hot jobs are?  Visit the Eagle Job Centre!
Gain a competitive edge! Join Eagle’s Executive Consulting Network!
Have you tried Eagle’s (very cost effective) VirtualRecruiter service?
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