1

An Employer Perspective on Higher Level skills & learning

Stephen KellyCEO, Micro Focus International PLC

3rd December 2008

Micro Focus

• Leading Applications Modernisation software company• Founded in 1976 • Global company with 800+ employees world-wide• Top 5 UK software Company UK listed (FTSE250)• FY2009 double revenues, tripled profits in 3 years

• Blue chip customer base• 25,000 current customers • 91 of the current Fortune 100• Global Strategic Partnerships with IBM, Microsoft, Oracle

Financial ServicesFinancial Services ManufacturingManufacturing Health CareHealth Care TelecomTelecom Retail / otherRetail / other

IT Education in UK : 7 years of ‘famine’ in land of plenty….

0

200000

400000

600000

800000

1000000

1200000

1400000

UK India

IT Jobs

IT Graduates

Only 11% (approx) graduates in UK graduate

in IT related degree

compared to 83% in Vietnam

Sources: CPHC, HESA, UCAS, NASSCOM, UKTI

& Micro Focus Research

0

20

40

60

80

100B

usi

nes

sC

riti

cal

Rec

ruit

men

tF

ocu

s

valu

e in

rece

ssio

n

Core IT skills (COBOL,CICS, etc)

Modern IT skills (eg: Web2.0 etc)

Only 13% of CFOs are very confident that

knowledge and skills exist in their

organizations to maintain core IT assets

in the future!

The weakest link – skills?

0

20

40

60

80

100

1 5 10 20 30

Businessknowledge

TechnicalKnowledge

Experience (years)

IT SuccessDrivers

Organizations focus too much on

technology and too little on the Business knowledge required

to apply it!

Em

plo

yee V

alu

e

Why graduates – Micro Focus ?

Prepared to Learn

Grow & adapt to your organizations

culture

Fresh perspective

Can be shaped and mentored

Graduates are the key to ensuring transition of your organizational

IT Business knowledge!

Develop to take over

from retiring experts

ACTION Outreach (ACademic ConnecTION)

140 Countries

Over 25000 downloads

>15000 concurrent licenses

Over 7000 graduates every year

78 ACTION partners worldwide – 15 countries

Supporting academic partners worldwide to

meet the skills requirements of

Business IT systems worldwide!

The missing Link?

Industry Universities

Demand

Supply

Communication & Collaboration

The Missing Link

• Work Directly with Universities• Employer Advisory Councils

• Employer Strategy Forum (e-skills UK)

• Work with Vendor Programs• Micro Focus ACTION Program

• IBM Academic Initiative

• Microsoft MSDN – Academic Alliance

• Etc…

Active communication and collaboration ensures that the graduates entering the market have the skills that are most important to the success of your business.

Employer Contributions to HE

• Influence and Inform the curriculum• Find graduates with the correct skill set

• Scholarships & Sponsorships• Mentoring students

• Establish early relationship with future recruits

• Establish or Cooperate with Vendor Academic Programs• Support universities with tools and resources

• ‘Wake up’ call • ‘wasted’ years

• Ticking ‘timebomb’

• Recession reality

• Skills shock

• Solutions not ‘talking shops’• Colleges/employers

• Skills alignment

• Back to basics and fundamentals

‘Famine to feast’ – no quick fixes

12

An Employer Perspective on Higher Level skills & learning

Stephen KellyCEO, Micro Focus International PLC

3rd December 2008

Backup slides

Post Crunch Recession – impacting skills landscape

• IT contractors rate dropped by 12%• Ebay announces 10% job cuts in global staff• Bank mergers cause widespread IT job loses

• Lehman brothers

• HBOS

Good experienced IT people are in shortage and will be absorbed by

other organisations.

Mergers eventually mean BIG IT projects and IT skills demand will

climb exponentially when they come to execute.

The Micro Focus Academic Connections (ACTION) Program

COBOL recruitment

17%

21%

37%

19%

7%8%

18%

47%

25%

3%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

50%

critical extremely important important not that important not important at all

importance of COBOL recruitment

difficulty in COBOL recruitment

% respondents with COBOL applications deployed in production system

94%

6%

Yes

No

94% use COBOL in Production Systems

75% say COBOL skills key to their IT in future

1000 Business Managers