Firms may need to act early in 2006 to avoid IT skills shortages, according to research published late in 2005 by the National Computing Centre (NCC). The study found growing demand for expertise in specialist areas, including dot-Net and Java development, and voice over IP (VoIP) technology.

The trade body's annual study revealed that few of the 383 organisations surveyed faced problems finding general IT support and systems staff, but the proportion having difficulties recruiting staff with niche skills had climbed from a fifth to 26 percent.

And the trend is set to continue, because a further 26 percent predicted they will need new IT skills in the next 12 months, particularly in the areas of VoIP, business analysis, dot-Net, Java and Windows 2003 Server.

The NCC therefore advised firms to draw up recruitment plans now for projects involving these skills, or risk a fight for staff next year.

Simon Holt of IT recruitment consultancy Spring said companies ought to tailor employee benefits to cope with this "two-speed market", offering different levels of benefits in accordance with the availability of experts.

"There are candidates for general roles, but employers need to invest in retaining staff with high-demand skills, because it'll be expensive to replace them," Holt added.

Nick Watson, enterprise managing director at Cisco, said organisations should also retrain existing staff to fill the coming vacancies.