Intelligent Enterprise

Information technology makes for a rocky career path, with IT workers' skills sometimes declared obsolete overnight. And even many IT pros who stay on the cutting edge now face the threat of outsourcing.

But not the business intelligence experts.

There's good news for IT staff with BI skills. Have a look at this list. Foote Partners, a consulting firm that specializes in IT compensation and workforce management, found that data warehouse and business intelligence jobs are among the most resistant to being shipped overseas. Other BI-related fields -- business analysts, business-process modelers and data modelers -- also made the list.

Companies can't expect IT workers in India or China to instantly grasp their business models. Therefore, Foote Partners says, IT jobs that require specific business knowledge or expertise are safer than those that don't. Business intelligence qualifies as one of the former.

But you don't need me to tell you that your job is relatively secure. Our two most recent Business Intelligence Pipeline polls show that readers are generally optimistic about BI spending and staffing levels this year.

In January we asked readers to guess how much their organizations will spend on BI this year compared to last. Forty-six percent said their companies will spend "considerably more" than last year, and another 18 percent answered "somewhat more." Only 5 percent of respondents expect spending to fall below levels from 2005.

In another poll last month, we tried to gauge whether readers' organizations will add BI-dedicated staff this year. A third of respondents said their organizations won't add BI jobs, but 56 percent said theirs would. Slightly more than 10 percent weren't sure.