Jul 27, 2011
Meet Frederick Rathweg
Fred Rathweg has been in the IT business for several decades now. I spoke with him the other day to touch base on his projects and progress with his clients, but also to pick his brain on some of the current trends in the IT industry.
Rathweg is a Middleware Multiplatform E-Commerce Specialist and he just finished a project with a TxMQ client.
Rathweg was working with a large university helping them upgrade their servers from WebSphere Application Server V6 running on AIX to WAS V7. According to Rathweg, the university had a great Unix Admin and they just needed short-term expertise to assist with the upgrade.
Rathweg was on site for a short contract to provide assistance, support, mentoring and training.
Rathweg can remember building systems back when he was in high school. That passion has always been with him and it doesn’t seem to change.
The shift in outsourcing trends
Over the years, Rathweg has seen many trends come and go in the IT world. Right now, he says, the trend has shifted to IT outsourcing.
As has been the talk for the past few years, many large companies are shifting their IT support to overseas locations like India and China.
There’s a large demand right now for middleware products. The IBM business model runs on the pretense that all software can run on any platform and this increases the need for the middleware products.
Because of this model, you no longer just see large companies shifting towards middleware products. Midsize companies now comprise a large part of the middleware market.
The cost to purchase the hardware and software is low, but it’s the cost of support that can cause issue.
Highly skilled IT talent has gradually begun to migrate from the countries we normally think about for IT outsourced talent, like India and China. And because so much of the skilled labor force is leaving, companies are finding it increasingly difficult to find inexpensive, outsourced IT talent.
The thing is, you don’t need to search far for IT support. The stigma remains that overseas talent is cheapest, but is it really the best?
There’s plenty of fantastic IT support right in your own back yard and you don’t have to go far to find it. Plus, the truth of the matter is you won’t generally pay much more for the North American based talent than you will for overseas outsourcing.
TxMQ prides itself on finding the best support. Consultants like Rathweg, who have been in the industry for years, will be assets to your company, whether as short-term consultants or long-term additions to the staff.
I think the you’ll see a resurgence of North American based IT support in the coming years, especially if companies continue to provide the supreme talent of IT consultants like Rathweg.
About TxMQ
Since its inception, TxMQ has specialized in Mainframe software and mainframe systems support offerings. As mainframe software and mainframe applications and subsystems like DB2, z/OS, CICS, MQ, and DB2 continued to grow in popularity, so too did TxMQ’s offerings.
These expanded to include technologies like virtualization solutions including Linux Virtualization, network Virtualization (Cloud Computing), and desktop Virtualization, as well as mainframe modernization.
As the web became more prevalent and a part of the enterprise, we followed IBM’s offerings and added skilled resources and SME’s in areas like WebSphere, BPM and SOA, including both Lombardi, and Metastorm (now a part of open text), as well as DataPower.
Contact us today at 716-636-0070 ext 29, or email wendy@txmq.com.
