The Skills Crunch: An Opening For The Channel To Help?

There's more to helping the midmarket than security. The CFO's office may be pulling tightly on the purse strings, which, in some cases, means CIOs have their limits on who they can hire in a very tight technology job market.

Gartner is high on cloud solutions that can help midmarket organizations get more for less and help them better compete with larger players in their industries. More specifically, the research firm suggests that midmarket companies create an infrastructure that leverages the appropriate cloud services and delivers the IT services required while consuming the fewest technical and financial resources possible.

What solution providers can do: While the current job market could be working against them, many of those technologies – specifically cloud – can help them "nullify" the size advantages of larger competitors. This is where service providers can step in and make a difference, even with application development, according to one IT director who attended MES.

Ken Baltzell, director of information systems and technology at Henry Wurst Inc., a commercial printer based in North Kansas City, Mo., said he will need development help "at some point" for APIs.