Certification Magazine - December 2007 - (Page 28) poor. These also were the same results as the CertMag 2006 Salary Survey. 8 – Lisa Rummler, lrummler@certmag.com this area who deal far more with formulating policy than with handling technology. The third sphere to pass the $90,000 mark was strategic systems design and implementation. This specialization supplanted two from last year: system design and system integration. As a result, it covers quite a bit of ground, and it can range from convergence to enterprise resource planning (ERP). It’s also contributed significantly to process improvements in marketing and sales. Interestingly, security — heretofore the hottest thing in IT — fell from first place last year to fourth this year, and it actually declined in average salary from $93,500 to $87,890. This suggests either a glut of professionals in this discipline, a decline in industry demand or both. Still, it would be presumptuous to assume information security has fallen dramatically in importance. After all, it’s still in the top five in CertMag’s Salary Survey, and it rates highly in most rankings of technology specializations. Coming in fifth was Java development, which registered $86,610 in average annual salary. This strong finish demonstrates this programming language’s popularity, and its adoption continues to grow at a rapid rate because of its ability to run on many different platforms and its simple object model. Falling out of the top five in 2007 were network design (second place in 2006) and project management (fifth in 2006). Last year, they brought in $89,770 and $85,590, respectively, and posted modest losses in annual income this year with averages of $85,310 and $84,870. Still, the network design and implementation category did place seventh overall, and it claimed the most respondents out of all the specializations included in the study. The other end of the spectrum was a bit more predictable, including specializations that typically place at or near the bottom of the survey. Help desk support came in last with $46,880 average annual income, with IT generalist ($55,370 in 2007) and Web development ($56,630) placing right above it in the rankings. These numbers might seem dismal when contrasted with the aforementioned IT categories, but when you compare it with U.S. per capita income, which was about $42,000 in 2006, they don’t look bad at all. Some Surprises in Specialization Salaries A couple of years ago, Certification Magazine first reported on the emergence of “dynamic IT.” According to research firm IDC (which explained the phenomenon in various studies) this trend represents the combination of three factors: • Dynamic application: construction of technology platforms that have integrated applications • Dynamic information: a move toward a broader, more inclusive perspective with regard to data management • Dynamic infrastructure: when organizational structures shift to more streamlined and efficient arrangements (it also pertains to corporate mergers and acquisitions in IT) In a more simple and synthesized explanation, dynamic IT refers to a comprehensive view of the technology sector — rather than focusing on one tool or task, it examines the entire technical infrastructure, the personnel who create and maintain it, the data management and communication it enables and the organizational objectives it serves. To put it even more succinctly, it places the emphasis on the “information” part of information technology. The influence of dynamic IT can be seen in the compensation levels of the assorted specializations covered in the CertMag 2007 Salary Survey. Most of the top-paying professions concern the preservation, protection, availability and accessibility of information. In an unprecedented development, three specializations registered more than $90,000 in average annual salary. Storage design and implementation was No. 1 with a bullet this year, coming in at $95,940. This category’s income rose nearly 10 percent, which helped catapult it from third place to first in a year. Information assurance was ranked a somewhat close second at $94,550. A newcomer to the Salary Survey, this field largely deals with data integrity and confidentiality. It has skyrocketed in importance in the past couple of years because of the rising importance of compliance issues regarding privacy, security and risk management. In fact, there are many practitioners in 28 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE December 2007
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