The pace of modern business is relentlessly fast. Many companies are struggling to keep up, and those that can't are falling into insolvency and ruin. The companies that have managed to keep up with this speed of innovation have done so by constantly adapting to the changing character of 21st century business. It's fast, it's aggressive, and it's often ruthless, but one thing it is over everything else, is creative.
Some of that creative approach can be seen in the various methods and directions of outsourcing and contracting. The reorganization and restructuring of businesses and business models around the outsourcing or specialization of labor can be seen throughout the economy, in many different sectors, though perhaps none so apparently as information technology.
IT is a difficult and demanding field. The knowledge base is enormous and the stakes for failure are extremely high. A large market in IT contracting has developed in the last ten years, and that sector continues to grow with the others that demand it—and that is nearly everyone. In the new economy, the transmission and control of information is essential to growth, and so those able to maintain the IT machine, as it were, are highly desirable.
This also means that some of the largest and most specialized companies take the lion's share of the best IT professionals, while smaller businesses are left with competent, though often not premier, IT staff.
