Technologies such as virtualisation could help firms cut costs according to participants in the new BCS IT Training podcast.

Investing in skills training for such technology could also help companies ride out any potential economic turbulence, believe participants of the first episode of the podcast. 

Bill Walker, a director at Xpertise Training, describes how demand for technologies such as virtualisation - where one large server splits into several smaller virtual servers - would grow as companies realise its money-saving potential. 

He says: 'Virtualisation has crept upon us over the last 18 months. One company that has moved to virtualisation technology has saved over £36,000 a year, just on electricity. You're not just saving on the tin, you're saving on the valuable resources.'

David Pardo, managing director of Pardo Fox, which runs the IT Skills Research programme, comments: 'In previous downturns, the companies and technologies that have done well are those in which people can invest to save money. Service management - ITIL® - and project management - Prince2 - have tended to survive previous downturns better than the straight technical subjects. These tend to be the skills that underpin the implementation of the kind of large systems that companies perceive as saving money for them.'

With revenues growing by 10 per cent year, and reports of continued healthy levels of business from the IT training industry, there are few signs of it yet suffering from the credit crunch.

Other topics covered in the podcast include how the training landscape has changed, the revamp of Microsoft certification and a 'Training Room 101' - in which commentators give opinions on the various trends in training methods/tools which have not worked for them over the years.

BCS will be releasing the training related podcast every month at www.bcs.org/podcasts/ittraining