8. Database management

Database management skills are growing in importance, according to several industry sources.

Robert Half Technology found database management to be considered an in-demand skill among 66 per cent of 1,400 CIOs it polled. Foote Partners reported that median pay for database skills increased by 10 per cent over the last two years, with Oracle database skills specifically seeing a 24 per cent spike in pay over the previous 12 months.

"Simply speaking, it is cheaper now to store data so more companies are keeping more data on large-scale disk drives, because in the online world content is king," Beyond.com's Milgram says. "The more content you have the bigger you are, and back-end SQL, MySQL and Oracle skills are in demand to ensure companies are successful at such large-scale data management."

9. Business intelligence/data mining

In a similar vein as data management, business intelligence and data mining skills are growing in importance to enterprise companies as analyzing the data stored can directly impact a business' bottom line.

"Customers have spent so much money on gathering their data and putting it in data warehouses that they are now looking for ways to generate revenue from the data or from the knowledge contained within it," says TAC Worldwide's Clifford. "It's important that IT professionals have these skills -- one part business intelligence and one part data mining -- but also that they can apply them in such a way that is suitable to their business.

According to Foote Partners, pay for business intelligence grew by more than 22 per cent in 2007.

10. The X factor

The trend is for IT professionals to emerge from being specialists in one technology area to being team members with broad knowledge of the environment. As networks and systems grow more sophisticated and intertwined with each other and the business, IT staff is expected to be well-versed in many areas and able to apply that know-how to the business at hand.

"I am seeing a need for IT staff to have a more holistic view when designing, integrating and troubleshooting. In the past, skill sets could be quite focused because there were better-defined lines of demarcation between systems; the trend continues to move to more interdependent and intertwined systems," says WakeMed Health & Hospitals' Tuman. "Now we need folks to understand how multiple systems interoperate, and when troubleshooting, have the ability to associate symptoms that surface in other areas back to the source."