A couple of weeks ago I wrote a short post about measuring the growth and share of collaboration platforms. I had found a UK website -- ITJobsWatch -- that tracks IT job postings by type of work, pay rates, technology used, and so on.

The data I pulled from the site compared the number of jobs available for the two leading collaboration platforms: IBM's Lotus Notes and Microsoft's Sharepoint and Exchange.

One shortcoming of that analysis is that it represented only the most recent three months, and so didn't show a trend.  Another is that it showed only contract positions. However, in digging further, I found that the site also shows data for the same period a year prior. There's a section on permanent positions also.

So, I extracted data on contracting and permanent IT positions  for the most recent three months, and for the same period in 2006:

• The total number of positions advertised for the category: Application Platform.
• The number of jobs for each of the three products: Notes, Sharepoint and Exchange. Those products  appear only in this category, so they are fully accounted for.

These charts show the results:

Contract Positions:

To summarize, this shows that  in the UK market:

• Over the past year, advertised contracting opportunities for Sharepoint and Exchange increased in both volume and share. Similar opportunities for Notes declined in both areas (also shown here).
• There are about three times as many contracting opportunities for Exchange as there are for Notes. There are also about three times as many contracting opportunities for Sharepoint as there are for Notes. For the Microsoft  Collaboration Platform (Exchange plus Sharepoint) the ratio is six times.

Permanent IT Positions:

To summarize, this shows that in the UK market:

• Over the past year, advertised permanent positions for Sharepoint and Exchange increased in both volume and share. Similar opportunities for Notes declined in both areas (also shown here).
• There are about 15 times as many permanent job advertisements for Exchange as there are for Notes.  For the Microsoft  Collaboration Platform (Exchange plus Sharepoint) the ratio is 17 times.

Some obvious caveats:

• this is just one source in one country and I haven't audited the site in any way. However, the site seems reputable. It has data going back about three years. With a base of about 40,000 positions  in this category alone, it's a pretty broad survey.
• I don't think this shows absolute share. The Exchange:Notes ratio is too high for that.

I do suspect this is a good indicator of both relative share and growth though.