There are not enough students taking up IT courses at the University even though there is clearly demand in the workplace, according to the dean of the ICT Faculty, Ernest Cachia.
There was a time in the not too distant past when the demand used to exceed the number of places available, driven by the promise of over 5,500 jobs at Smart City. The State and private sector struggled to cope but the sector is now facing a crisis.
Malta is falling behind when it comes to providing enough programmers, designers, and skilled workers to work in this field.
Sixty per cent of the respondents from the ICT, telecommunications and i-gaming sectors say in the EY Attractiveness Survey released yesterday that they could not find the right specialised skills in the local market.
The faculty, which opened in 2007, caters for over 2,000 students in all, the majority of which are in other faculties but following ICT study units. It had an intake of 130 this academic year, meaning it has 400 exclusive faculty students.
The faculty still has room to grow, however, and could probably cope with double the number of exclusive faculty students without losing its ability to mentor all aspects of the students’ experience. But the numbers are not the only concern.
“Employers favour university graduates – but far too many are being lured to the workplace before they proceed to masters’ level. The intake to masters this year was extremely low. This is a growing problem as industry has a real thirst for employees and they start headhunting as soon as the students join the course!”
“There is definitely a shift in industry and while they were previously happy with students who have a bachelors’ degree, they now want postgraduates.
“The competitive edge comes from specialisation...”
Once out there, there is a dazzling array of careers that are being offered and local companies are now no longer only looking at the domestic market.
For example, earlier this year, PTL International acquired SAD, Poland’s largest Apple retailer, and Apco, the Malta-based payments business. CEO Kenneth Spiteri believes that you must look beyond the horizon to create a critical mass for growth.
“It is possible to succeed in niche markets. However, innovation evolves rapidly and narrowly-focused companies risk being out of business fairly quickly as legacy companies or even start-ups leapfrog existing technologies.
“Both acquisitions fit PTL International’s vision which is geared towards international diversification. Under this vision, we are able to consistently expand our portfolio of technological capabilities – and our talent pool – and identify an increasingly collection of synergies. In parallel, we continuously grow and diversify our customer base,” he said.
While companies are growing as IT service providers in their own right, others are providing IT services to help other companies grow.
Stefan Morrow, the head of Wildgras, believes that any start-up planning to create an online based product or service needs an experienced IT partner.
“This holds whether it is a standard e-commerce site or a bespoke web application. Having a good partner simplifies communication, project planning and in many cases, as in the case with Wildgras, they can offer additional business consulting to help with start-up gaps such as writing business and financial plans, preparing for investors and of course prototyping.”
Apart from e-commerce, companies are realising that their website should not just be an online version of the old-style brochure. Dominic Scicluna, who is head of business development at Exigy, has seen many changes in website design over the years.
“In early web design, marketers used to experience a lot of pressure to fit in as much content about products and services as possible into the company’s website. Complex visual effects and flashy animations used to make up an edgy website.
While companies are growing as IT service providers in their own right, others are providing IT services to help other companies grow
“We have now experienced a shift towards visual storytelling, whereby text on websites has been cut down to just the essentials, combined with visuals that impart important information. Today, it’s all about providing an immersive and interactive experience to users, making website responsiveness a must. With cloud computing on the rise and with a massive boost in social media popularity, web designers need to keep the bigger picture in mind and design websites that churn out information in a faster and reliable manner,” he said.
Companies are also rising up to cope with the ever-increasing demand for data storage. Raphael Trigona of eWorld Ltd, said that his clients range from telcommunications, to major banks and financial services and igaming companies, besides companies of all sizes and industries.
“One of the key drivers for the IT sector is the continual growth in the demand for data storage, and the consequent demand for improved server performance and network throughputs.
“By virtue of its early specialisation in virtualisation techniques through world leading solution provider VMWare, we have space developed a leading local position in this field. Virtualisation implementation, management and performance optimisation are ever present challenges.”
John de Giorgio, the managing director of Shireburn Software, believes that even a small country like Malta can create products with global reach. “At Shireburn Software we created two products which were world firsts with our Integra for Notes product, and more recently with our Concessionaire Analyzer+ solution aimed at airports. These were both unique solutions worldwide. It is all about opportunity identification and then execution.
“The important thing is the business need that the product addresses, the quality of the solution and the ability and financial capacity to market the product globally or at least regionally. I believe that the key to success is identifying a specific business need which is not addressed in the current market and developing and marketing a product for that niche.”