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The inability to find and retain technical talent looms as the single biggest problem facing solution providers in 2007, just as the channel is poised for a breakout growth year.
Much of what's causing the current labor shortage is a perfect storm of economic and geopolitical events coupled with the fact that many solution providers and the vendors they represent have done a poor job of marketing the channel's value to IT customers and to the general public.
Vendors, too, are feeling the pinch and are, in fact, exacerbating the channel labor shortage by hiring away top technical talent from solution providers, some solution providers say.
Hewlett-Packard and IBM, for example, rarely mention the channel in their earnings calls with analysts, and they don't spend significant advertising dollars touting solution providers as a key ingredient in the IT solution supply chain. HP, which says that solution providers generate upward of 50 percent of the company's revenue, for example, only last week launched its first ads touting the value of channel partners.
All of this has left solution providers to fend for themselves in a particularly bleak labor market.
Darrell Bowman, CEO of AppTech, a Tacoma, Wash.-based solution provider, said a fallout from the dot-com days as well as the myth that most high-tech jobs are being outsourced abroad are contributing to the dearth of technical talent.
"That the supply of technical talent is so low is a direct result of the dot-com bust," Bowman said. "People are shying away from technology."
Bowman also said continuing press coverage of outsourcing tech jobs to places such as India and China is resulting in a decrease in the number of students entering college computer science programs, even though, when it comes to channel jobs, concerns about outsourcing are unfounded.
"You can't outsource something that has to be touched," he said.
Bowman said finding technical talent is his No. 1 business problem and has reached the stage where it could seriously impact his ability to grow in the months to come.
"We are starting to get some really good opportunities put in front of us, and I've reached the point where I have to grow the company, and I have to hire more people to do that," he said.
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