Technology Mashup

The Pressure of Parity?

I've been thinking a little this morning about exchange rates and the dreaded thought of Pound / Euro parity. You will be glad to hear that this is not a post on European Monetary Theory, or a defensive rant against Britain joining the ERM.

It did occur to me however that as Sterling continues to slide against Euro and as the UK credit crunch deflates wage expectations that it wont be long before the highly skilled UK contract / services market is being tapped from our near neighbours across Netherlands, France and Germany. I guess this will be equally related to budgetary constraints and labour availability in those markets, but UK skills must be looking attractive against falling cost.

I'm left wondering if some form of 'osmotic' resource drain is imminent? Is it time to polish off the 'phrase books' and head for an extended 'city break'? Will there be an impact on resource availability for UK IT contracts?

I sat through a number of sessions at a tech conference on Thursday, which I found very useful in terms of understanding the technical landscape of one of our key partner’s solution portfolio. After presentation two or three maybe (and I cant rule out the effects of caffeine crash – as there weren’t nearly enough coffee breaks) I began to get rather irritated with the whole ‘business v’s IT debate’.