SaaS: How on earth can you ever retain talent on board?

This is what I conclude from this research that Symantec did. Before you read this, please think about this:

• SaaS is coming like a freight train, why do you think talwented people would want to stay here if you can't offer them enough salary and cannot help them expand their horizons?
• Hiring new talent is a big problem as well since they are looking for jobs at different levels, you do not seem to be on the radar. (When I say you, I mean the customers who are sub-consciously moving their data centers, slowly but gradually, towards a hosting- and pay-as-you go model)
• SaaS fight: Vendors with SaaS models are also bound to fight aggresively for talent. They need everything that the customers had/have: Applications, Servers, OS, Broker architecture and even process architecture, everything! The model of pay "10 folks real good" works better than offering meager salaries to hundreds of them.
  
• Clients just don't have the insight in training their staff on stuff that is yet to come, and it is coming very fast at you! So less agile shops will have to face the consequences, smarter firms are willing to invest in the staff and will keep on luring talented people with better packages (salary, broad training: wanna learn networking, databases, OS, storage?, are arguments very hard to resist if you want to grow as a candidate) You just can't fight that!
  

Symantec did this survey in Canada :

Staffing is a real challenge, though, according to the survey, which found that 52 percent cited themselves as being understaffed. The skills shortage has hit the data centre market hard, it seems, as the survey reports that data centres have a difficult time finding (86 percent) and retaining (54 percent) skilled data centre administrators.

The problem of filling these positions is especially severe in Canada, said Derrington.

This issue is made worse by the increasing complexity of the data centre, according to the survey. According to the survey, "Several managers said the amount of knowledge that staffers need to run a data centre today has gone up 'astronomically' in the last five years, and they expect that to increase even further in the next five years." Derrington said that this, along with increasing data retention/protection government regulations, will compound the complexity (and thus the hiring challenge, too) faced by administrators.

I will write the Part 2: Virtualization: Shi(f)t happens! tonight with special focus on IT staff.