IT@Cork

Cork – the ideal location for your IT business?

it@cork has published the results of its member survey. 165 members completed the survey giving a detailed insight into the how I.T. is faring in Cork.

The main points are:

  • 70% of respondents indicated that their businesses achieve average-to-excellent value from recently qualified IT graduates
  • 30% of respondents indicated that their organisations had openings for IT graduates currently and
  • in excess of 80% of respondents do not consider IT staff turnover to be a problematical issue for their organisations

Despite the doom and gloom headlines around the likes of Motorola’s pull-out, it seems the IT industry in Cork is very healthy.

Employers are getting good value from their IT graduate employees. Many have openings for more. Not only that but employee churn in the IT sector is not a significant problem for companies in Cork.

From these results, it would seem that Cork is an ideal location for an IT business. The only cautionary note is that

94% believed that the low levels of applications for places on third level IT courses, evident in recent years, could have a negative impact on their ability to build upon the success achieved to date.

One thought on “Cork – the ideal location for your IT business?”

  1. My gut feeling (and it’s just a feeling) is that as an IT professional and IT Service company I have much more chance of securing work in Dublin than I ever will in Cork. (by a factor of 5 at least) If I take my business to Cork I am going to spend time and money travelling to Dublin to engage clients.

    For IT “manufacturers” e.g. software companies, development companies etc Cork may well be a good location.

    But for service companies Dublin has a vastly larger catchments’ area and an order of magnitude difference in the numbers of companies requiring IT services.

    Top that off with difficulties with bandwidth prices, comparative cost in living in Cork versus wages and I don’t see Cork as a viable location.

    Lastly, historically economic downturns have hit Cork harder and faster than Dublin and it took Cork longer to recover.

    “94% believed that the low levels of applications for places on third level IT courses, evident in recent years, could have a negative impact on their ability to build upon the success achieved to date”

    That figure is probably similar all over Ireland tbh. On the up side the average cost of an IT person is going upwards at a rate of knots. Big wages and contracting rates for all over the next 18 months to two years. On the down side IT people may soon find themselves pricing themselves out of the market. Anyone remember Y2K rates?

Comments are closed.