The it@cork Blog

Welcome to the inaugural podcast in the IT@Cork Member Podcast series. This podcast has been generously sponsored by Microsoft Ireland.

To listen to this podcast you can:

• Click on the Play icon above to listen on your computer
• Download the audio file to an mp3 player (i.e. an iPod, an iRiver, etc.) and play whenever or
• Subscribe to the Podcast in Yahoo!, Odeo or the iTunes store and have the weekly podcasts automatically delivered to you (I’ll be adding link for the Yahoo!, Odeo and iTunes subscriptions later today).

My guest on the show today is Shemas Eivers, MD of Client Solutions. During the course of the interview we talked about everything from Web 2.0, to Client Solutions purchase by Horizon to the current difficulties sourcing good engineers.

Here are a list of the questions I asked Shemas in the course of the interview and the times in the interview at which I asked them (in case you wish to fast forward to a particular question):

Who is Shemas Eivers – what is your background and how did you get to be MD of Client Solutions? – 0:20

Client Solutions are an operating division of horizon Technology group – how did that sale come about? – 0:58

Fortuitous timing? – 1:54

What do Client Solutions do? – 2:29

Are you agnostic in your development platforms or do you have a development platform which you prefer? – 3:46

Have you come across the term Web 2.0 and what do you make of it? – 4:38

What’s your definition of Web 2.0? – 5:25

How is the trend towards outsourcing to india affecting your business? – 6:31

There’s a growing trend towards the use of open Source software occurring now – you see it with the likes of Microsoft’s recent announcement of a partnership with SugarCRM, for example, do you see this as a threat to Irish dev houses? – 7:56

Does support entail sending people onsite, or an FAQ, or how does that work out? – 9:36

What has been the greatest change you have seen in the software dev business in the last 5 years? – 10:46

Where do you see the major changes coming in the next 2-3 years? – 12:23

One of the major issues in software development is that things are constantly updating, how do you manage change like that within an organisation? – 13:24

Is it difficult to get engineers who have a mix of software and people management skills? – 15:33

With a lessening of demand and a reduction in skills, are you now seeing less qualified people commanding higher salaries? – 17:10

Why are Client Solutions members of IT@Cork – what do you get out of that? – 18:19

Download the interview here (22.7mb mp3).

My Odeo Channel (odeo/21c5045fc4772eb4)