Polish up your Java, and dump those DB2 manuals. That's the message the U.K. employment market is sending to seasoned IT professionals and newcomers alike. But legacy-system skills, which enjoyed a burst of demand in the period leading up to Y2K, are firmly out of favor. The trend is symptomatic of growing demand for dot-com people across Europe, from Ireland to the borders of Russia.
Employers seem to agree.
SAP demand and salaries for SAP specialists have plummeted, the researchers said. The picture is dramatically different from that in 1998 and 1999, when Y2K fears and the need to overhaul financial systems to accommodate the single European currency meant that traditional skills such as Cobol and DB2 were in high demand. A strong call for Java was also seen in the financial sector, although engineering industries were sticking with older technologies such as Ada and Pascal . The changes taking place are not just technological, though. That's reflected in the increasing number of students who are opting for computer science.