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If you are looking for a career opportunity within
the IT industry where you can still afford to command a premium
then Web services is the area to be in. With the demand outstripping
the supply and the situation likely to remain so over the next one
to two years, professionals in this area are going to be much sought
after provided they have the adequate skill sets and a strong foundation
of technical knowhow to go with.
Knowledge of Web services will become essential
on a developer’s resume few years down the line with the growing
tendency for almost all applications to be Web-based or upgradations
involving Web enablement. From a long-term career perspective, experts
point out that Web services is one of the new critical trends in
application development that professionals cannot afford to miss
out on. And with the right mix of new specialist skills and old-fashioned
programming—a trend they can very well encash to their advantage
for the present.
Hot growth area
Web services has been predicted to be one of
the hot growth areas in the near future. As per IDC, Web services
market worldwide is expected to grow from $11.6 billion to $34 billion
by the year 2007, a growth of around 200 percent. Microsoft has,
in fact, changed its entire Windows platform to be based on the
.Net technology. The fact that technology leaders like Microsoft,
IBM and Sun are putting emphasis on technologies used in Web services
will be a major driver for the demand for specialists in this area.
Though the Web services market in India is only
emerging, there are clear indications of increasing demand for professionals
in this field. Pankaj Khanna, vice president and head of Search
Practice, Job-Street.com India, points out that Web services options
look like a definite winner for at least the next two years.
According to Vijay Anand, managing director of
India Engineering Centre at Sun Microsystems India, J2EE and Web
services apply to each of the key growth areas for India like application
development and maintenance, along with new areas like reference
architectures, blueprints and managed services. Providing a training
company’s perspective (which is essential considering that
the popularity of these courses reflects to a great extent upon
the job scenario), Ajay Sharma, CEO and president of New Horizons
India, a player in corporate training space, adds that one-third
of the company’s product mix is centered around Web services.
However, players like Aptech are more cautious for the present and
upbeat for the future. Thimmiya, national head of sales and placements,
Aptech Computer Education, recognises that Web services are at a
nascent stage in India as compared to other developed countries
where there is more awareness: “This has led to lesser demand
for courses pertaining to Web services. However, in the next couple
of years, the demand would definitely grow, mirroring the increasing
awareness.”
Placement scenario
The current placement scenario reflects this
upbeat mood. To give an indication, for Jobstreet the percentage
of hires has been moving up in the IT space over the last six months
and of this the primary growth factor has been the fulfilment of
Web and related services
jobs. “Over the last six months we have
noticed a spurt in jobs and there is a definite marked uptrend in
jobs pertaining to Web applications involving Java and related applications,”
says Khanna.
Giving the perspective of Microsoft’s own
requirements for web services professionals, Daniel Ingitaraj, marketing
manager of .Net, Microsoft India, points out that as far as the
technical staff is concerned all the current set of people have
to scale up the Web services knowledge and all the new set of people
being recruited are expected to come with prior adequate knowledge
in this domain.
Sun Microsystems, on the other hand, has strong
plans to grow its India Engineering Centre (delivering products
including the Application Server, Webserver, Portal Server, etc.)
further in this fiscal year. Presently there are over 50 openings
for top notch software professionals and it is expected to continue
to grow further over the next few years. Given that most of the
engineers are required to be J2EE proficient, knowledge of Web services
becomes essential. J2EE, the enterprise edition of Java, has built
in Web services capability and is one of the popular platforms for
enterprise Web services. In fact, most of the engineers at the centre
are skilled Web professionals.
A sizeable demand for Web services professionals
in India is coming from the large population of software and services
companies and the domestic Indian market. Khanna adds that almost
all the top-notch MNCs are setting up centres and driving more growth
here and the top five of Indian IT companies continue hiring.
Ingitaraj states that it is very clear that the
demand is largely coming from software services companies who are
doing projects for their customers overseas like the US and UK,
where big Web services projects are happening. These customers are
much ahead in the technology curve than their counterparts in India.
A year or two down the line as the Indian matures up to Web services
technology, it is also likely to contribute to the growth in demand
for skilled professionals in this domain.
Anand adds that a strong trend over the last
year is a significant move by MNCs to create software development
centres in India: “Many of them are product development centres
requiring strong competencies in Java, J2EE and Web services. India
already has a strong complement of Java developers and an emerging
strength in J2EE and this positions them well for Web services.
I foresee strong demand for such skill sets over the next two years,
both from the services perspective (given many J2EE deployments)
but also to staff up the product MNC centres in India.”
In terms of verticals, job opportunities are
available in the banking, financial, manufacturing, insurance, sectors,
where already Web services exist. Sharma informs that some of the
big recruiters are from the telecom, banking, finance, insurance,
software development and the government.
Salary
One of the high points of a career in Web services
is the ability of professionals with the right skill sets and domain
expertise to command a premium in terms of remuneration. Khanna
informs that the average salary drawn at entry levels range from
Rs 1,20,000 per annum to Rs 1,80,000 per annum. In MNCs and premium
companies the salary goes up by 30 percent. Ingitaraj adds that
given all their fundamentals are strong a new entrant in this domain
can command a salary anywhere between Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000 per
month.
Skill sets
A career in Web services requires the basic analytical
and logical skills that are necessary for any programming course.
Recruiters typically look for candidates with knowledge of Web architectures,
Internet technologies and Java 2 Enterprise Edition. Those developers
are familiar with component-based applications, which are the foundation
of Web services. Key skills for building Web services interfaces
include knowledge of XML and SOAP, J2EE and Microsoft .Net platforms,
the Java and C# languages and the Visual Basic .Net development
environment.
Companies also seek candidates with an understanding
of business processes. Sharma informs that a Web services professional
should be well conversed with the following topics—distributed
applications, design Web services-based solution, Web services technologies,
Microsoft .Net Framework, Web service consumer and implement Web
services using Visual Studio .Net, publish and deploy a Web Service,
secure a Web service, implement catching in a Web service, evaluate
the trade-offs and issues that are involved in designing a real-world
Web service, implement non-standard Web services such as HTML screen
scraping and aggregating Web services. “Web services careers
require a strong foundation in mathematics, computer science and/or
engineering and this is similar to most technical IT jobs. It will
also require the person to be skilled in related technologies—design
methodologies, software engineering, Java programming, XML, etc,”
adds Anand.
Training
In terms of courses what is primarily on offer
are different programmes from Microsoft, Sun and Oracle. Some courses
offered are Visual Studio .Net, XML, J2EE, HTML and the entire basket
of Oracle offerings on Web services.
Recruiting organisations are not totally satisfied
with the current level of skill sets and training available in the
Indian market in the domain of Web services. Ingitaraj asserts that
manpower is not well trained on high-end Web services as most of
the courses on offer are basic programmes. Highly skilled professionals
who are required to know from the concept to design to the development
stage with end-to-end skill sets will be the order of the future
as the market grows more mature.
shipra@expresscomputeronline.com
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