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The crisis in the IT market is overcome.
Furthermore German IT freelancers seem to be very satisfied with their order situation. The importance of the IT market in Germany is increasing further.
This is also fitting to the current market figures I would like to present you in below.

German IT service providers expect a market growth of up to 5% by the end of 2010.
A growth even stronger is expected for the following years. The further distant the future, the better are the prospects for the German IT market.

Market Research Company and consultancy Lünendonk surveyed an explorative group of German suppliers and received mostly positive responses concerning the IT market development:
For the rest of 2010 eight out of ten respondents anticipate a maximum market growth of five percent, whereas not one of the respondents expects losses for the remaining year.

The expectations from 2010 to 2015 are even better.
Good two-thirds (64%) of the respondents expect an increase of 1-5%. The remaining 34% expect an even higher growth, so the average agrees on 5.7%.

Lünendonk indicates the current market volume of € 17.3 billion. In comparison to 2008, it is a growth of 2%. (These figures are based on information provided by the industry association Bitkom and the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO).

What are your impressions – Have we left the crisis behind?
We are looking forward to your opinions.

Source: cio.de

Just recently projektwerk invited some IT experts for an interview, starting with Stephen Gullans, CEO of EMTEC IT-Solutions GmbH.

What was the most interesting project you have implemented?
The most interesting project in terms of location was a project implemented in Hawaii.
The most interesting project in terms of people was working with a demanding customer in Ireland. Although a number of other software vendors dreaded working with the project manager, we got along very well and the implementation of the software project fulfilled all expectations.

What was the most difficult experience you have had with a customer?
Probably one of the most difficult experiences was implementing a software project at a customer site where the customer had thrown out another system due to unfulfilled requirements. The software partner I was working with had just switched the data management from a simple database to a full-fledged database management system. There were some persistent problems during commissioning and the customer was exerting much pressure to get everything up and run the project to satisfaction. After an intense period of fault finding and software modification everything was solved to the full satisfaction of the customer.

What was the biggest challenge you had to face?
About a year after becoming self-employed business was bad due to 9/11. At the same time my main partner was trying to destroy my business in order to take it over. In the end I was able to find a new and better partner.

Are there customers you would refuse to work with?
So far I’ve been fortunate not to have worked with customers, who I would refuse to work with in the future. However if a customer is not willing to listen to good advice and insist on having things done in a way which I could not answer for, I would recommend the customer to work with somebody else. Also I believe in fair-play and if someone does not play according to such rules there is no pleasure in working with such people.

After slightly descending project postings on projektwerk.de in May, the overall positive trend continues. In particular, the number of SAP projects hit a record high in June: figures mount up to 296 projects in 2010 compared to 110 projects in June 2009.

This growth is due to an unexpectedly strong business year for SAP – as the German software developer was able to increase it’s turnover considerably in the first quarter of 2010. This significant upward development can be attributed to the after-effects of the economic crisis, which drives many companies to restructure operations. This, in turn, leads to heavy investments in the IT sector.

However, not only SAP projects on projektwerk.de show an upward trend.

According to BITKOM, the German Association for Information Technology, the expectations concerning the tendency of the ICT sector’s financial situation rose by 71 percent in the second quarter of 2010.

“The BITKOM-industry is expecting further growth”, says BITKOM chairman Scheer. This is partly due to the necessity of upgrading such infrastructures as electricity supply, government agency networks, and the educational system. Nevertheless, such improvements are only manageable with sufficient specialists available to get the work done. As part of this development, the demand for IT-professionals and freelancers will increase significantly. According to BITKOM there are about 20,000 vacant positions in the ICT sector – every third company listed in the BITKOM Index is complaining about a lack of experts, negatively affecting their performance and business development.

Managing Director of projektwerk GmbH, Dr. Christiane Strasse, sees significant advantages for IT freelancers: “Based on our figures, we can say with certainty that the recovery of the IT market will further continue as more investments will be made. Another important factor is the lack of experts. However, this deficiency can be optimally offset by utilizing freelancers.”

There are a lot of myths around multitasking and how productive people are who try to accomplish work by doing several things simultaneously. It is often mistaken as something that you need to be capable of when for example applying for a project.

A simple answer that shows you how multitasking can slow down your effectiveness while working can be found in a quick test. You will be surprised how little is needed to show that sticking to one task and move on to the next after can save you time. Move on to the Test!

Vom 14. bis 19. September 2010 findet erneut die automechanika als eine der größten und bekanntesten Automobilmessen in Deutschland statt.

Einen Teil der Veranstaltung in Frchankfurt wird dabei auch die IT-Branche darstellen, neben Bereichen wie Autoteilen, Werkstattausrüstung und Tuning. Genaueres zu der zuletzt 160 000 Besuer zählenden Messe finden Sie hier.

Newest studies (by White Horse) have shown that in the B2B section almost 60% of the companies do not make use of social media frequently. This contact support is either used only on a basic level (45%) or not performed at all (14%).

B2B businesses do not put any interest (36%) in social media opportunities or due to lack of education (almost a quarter) do not try to establish a regular social media presence. The B2C sector however is a lot more engaged in social media presences like social networks, mobile applications or company blogs.

Reasons for this are more traditional views and attitudes of the Business-to-Business marketers as well as the perception of irrelevance. You can look at some more results, descriptions and explanations of the social media significance here.



projektwerk is working hard to provide the best possible service, which is why we’ve yet again made some beneficial changes on projektwerk.com/it. it has long been a top priority to make the service more simple, customizable, and useful.

so what exactly has changed? by adjusting the application on the technical side, an important modification has been implemented: the elimination of the search-function.

we took into consideration our users demand for better structure and more clarity on the site (remarks mainly concerned confusion about what kinds of queries to conduct and the at times overwhelming amount of search results). what we came up with as a solution is a matching-service, which automatically provides the user with appropriate projects and profiles (according to the users predefined specifications).

our brief tour explains how the new service works.

we modified the url-structure and you can now reach the site via it.projektwerk.com

this also applies to our partner sites fashion.projektwerk.com (hosted by tanja weichenhain and josy liebetrau) and automotive.projektwerk.com (hosted by dr. oliver schlösser).

this is what the new home page looks like:

please feel free to have a look at the new site it.projektwerk.com, and as always, we appreciate your feedback.

kind regards,

your projektwerk-team

Some of the big IT trends turn out to also be the biggest risks concerning IT security in 2010:

1. credit card data
The loss of customer data will always imply a loss of confidence in the company.
Until now data is mainly protected by firewalls, but while hacker are becoming smarter, security features for data also need to improve.

2. social media
The simpler and faster information spreads online, the more harm it can do. In addition information can hardly be taken back once it’s out in the web.

3. cloud computing
Outsourcing data, next to all its merits, also involves a loss of confidentiality, integrity and availability of possibly sensitive data.

4. smartphones and PDA’s
More and more people using e.g. smartphones for business as well as private concerns, but at the same time handheld devices are not as well equipped with security features as the regular desktop computer.

Are there any points you would like to add to this list?
Go for it and share your opinion!

hi,

in the last couple of weeks we invested a lot of effort into the further development and optimization of projektwerk. we are constantly working on improving our service and are happy to announce the launch of the alpha version of projektwerk.com/it.

the new page looks like this:

projektwerk.com/it offers you new benefits and innovative features. it is easy to use, customizable and industry-sector-specific. the new matching-service provides an efficient way to allocate the supply and demand of projects and expertise. also, you can now create smart folders in your personalized dashboard to help you keep track of relevant postings. view the FAQ’s on projektwerk.com/it for more information.

the current alpha version has the purpose of putting these new features to the test.

because optimal improvements are best achieved with real data, we encourage you to register an account on projektwerk.com/it and test the new platform. we value your opinion highly, so please feel free to post comments, ideas, questions, suggestions or thoughts in the “Feedback” section.

kind regards,

projektwerk