It looks like good news in the salary stakes for networking executives and applications developers, according to a survey released on Monday.

Ambit's IT&T Salary Index shows network engineers have recorded a 6.1 per cent salary hike since July 2004. The survey takes a snapshot each quarter of the recruiter's clients and roles either filled or received. It is not seasonally adjusted.

While the most of the significant salary increases occurred in the SAP and Oracle space, Ambit NSW group state manager Jeff Knowles, said, "There are strong opportunities across all IT&T positions that by mid-year pressures on salaries will intensify ... We're likely to see a substantial lift in salaries then," Knowles said.

"The whole IT market is strong, very strong in fact - the economy has been like this for a long time; people are testing out contracting due to the fact the market is strong in all sectors.

The salary report found the annual take for someone involved in Oracle financials in February 2005 is $108,000, an increase of $8000 since July 2004.

For those with PeopleSoft skills, there's been an increase from $100,000 to $110,000, but the largest increase in the ERP space was for SAP skills, up from $105,000 to $113,000. DB2 engineers gained a dramatic increase from $98,000 to $120,000, while remuneration for C++ experts rose from $85,000 to $93,000.

An experienced network engineer's salary lifted to $88,000 from $82,000 and the salary for a network designer increased from $100,000 to $110,000.

General manager of Hays information technology recruitment, Peter Noblett, said there will be a growth in the ERP and CRM space in 2005 with the search for a competitive advantage driving the increase.

"Any efficiencies through ERP and CRM systems will be useful to core business" with the benefits of IT systems providing the advantage, Noblett said.

"SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft are the big ones, but there will be an increase in interest for bespoke systems from the development side.

"Last year was big in the customer analytics space and now this year, as a direct result of that work, businesses know who their customers are so they can service them better and gain the competitive [edge]."

Ambition IT recruitment director Jane Bianchini said candidates in the higher echelons of the ERP and CRM pay bracket not only have the technical skills but know what it takes to provide the level and quality of service businesses have come to expect.

"IT departments have worked hard to win back the trust of their internal and external customers, which has manifested itself in service focusing on the customer experience," Bianchini said.

"Many companies consider networking as crucial to the way they manage their business, therefore are willing to pay [rather than] sacrifice reliability, performance and security."