Ask Slashdot: What Will IT Look Like In 10 Years?

An anonymous reader writes "The IT industry is a lot different than it was 10 years ago; it underwent a huge boom in terms of labor and services required to keep up with the times. Now, we are entering a consolidation phase. The cloud makes it easier for companies to host e-mail, so now instead of organizations having their own Exchange guy, they will outsource it to the cloud. Instead of having a bunch of network engineers, they will deploy wireless and no longer need cabling or current levels of network engineering services. What do you think the long-term consequences of this will be? What skills do you think will be useful in 10 years? Is IT going to put its own out of work, like we did with the post office and libraries?"

Comments

Re:IT has always been cyclic; no surprises coming

[msauve]

You must be new to IT, or at least networks. "Cloud" isn't new at all. Network diagrams (going back at least to how DEC drew DECnet ones) have long used "grey clouds" to indicate areas of the network where the internal details weren't important to understanding. So, "cloud" in relation to networks has been used for 30+ years.

So, "cloud" services are just ones that are out there in that cloud - you don't necessarily know or care the exact network path to the service, it's just at the other end of some pipe (oh, that's another networking term you should get used to - we don't use real pipes, either).