Best of the Web
Today's scour of the Web uncovers skills shortages in India, future energy problems and Adobe joining the Open Source route
India faces IT skills shortage Outsourcing, especially offshore, can seem an attractive option if it results in significant cost savings. However, it’s proving so popular that India may be heading towards a shortage of IT staff, says the BBC. According to India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), India faces a shortfall of half a million skilled workers by 2010:
India firms warn on IT skills gap
Forbes also reports that India is beginning to face the same kind of headaches experienced by prosperous Western countries, including traffic jams, high staff turnover and raid wage rises.
India Revisited
Energy risk for IT Data centre energy requirements are coming under increasingly scrutiny as concern about green issues and energy costs grow. Earlier this year, Information Week suggested that skyrocketing electricity costs could even put Google at risk, although probably not for another 20 years.
How Google might fail
A new report from the International Energy Authority (IEA), quoted in the FT, reinforces this assessment stating that we face the twin threats of not having enough energy and damaging the environment by using too much of it. The report’s obvious conclusion is that strong policy action is needed to move the world onto a more sustainable energy path.
IEA warns on world’s energy supplies
Adobe joins the Open Source crowd Open Source software seems rarely out of the news these days. Adobe is the latest to join in the fashion of opening up its code, with Information Week detailing its plans to offer the ActionScript Virtual Machine, the scripting engine inside its Flash Player, to the Mozilla Foundation.
Adobe Opens Flash Scripting Engine Code
Elsewhere, Innovations argues that the Open Source model enhances developer creativity as they no longer have to worry about intellectual property rights and patent infringement.
Open-Source Software Model Is a Landmark in Innovation