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What an IT Career Will Look Like 5 Years Out
snydeq writes: InfoWorld's Paul Heltzel reports on the impact that IT's increasing reliance on the cloud for IT infrastructure will have on your career in the years ahead. "[O]ne fact is clear: Organizations of all stripes are increasingly moving IT infrastructure to the cloud. In fact, most IT pros who've pulled all-nighters, swapping in hard drives or upgrading systems while co-workers slept, probably won't recognize their offices' IT architecture — or the lack thereof — in five years. This shift will have a broad impact on IT's role in the future — how departments are structured (or broken up), who sets the technical vision (or follows it), and which skills rise to prominence (or fall away almost entirely)."
Careers, at least as we used to know them, are mostly gone now. We won't see them again any time soon. Even the industry that the federal government so lovingly bailed out back in 2010 has been laying off plenty of IT workers in recent times, and they were amongst the most stable places for IT "careers" before now. If you want to be able to retire at some point before you die, you need to be constantly looking for other job opportunities. Move up, move down, move laterally; it doesn't matter. Just keep moving or you'll be under the chopping block.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Whole organizations will be reliant on whole other organizations, who may go out of business on the random, or get swallowed up by competitors of whole organizations(1).
In reality a hosted cloud is more expensive and less secure in almost all cases. When will people wake up and realize that cloud was created not to provide any particular service that can't be provided locally, but is just a way to turn something you used to pay for once into a monthly forever and ever payment. Cloud is cheaper up front, but almost always more expensive in duration.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
Seriously?
Wonder how many more times we're going to hear of cloud architectures being compromised before that idiotic mentality changes.
People keep saying this to me. "Oh we won't need your type in a few years because cloud everything." Never mind the fact that around 99% of my work is software-based. I only rarely on occasion mess with hardware. Every 5 years for a hardware refresh, and the occasional drive swap from a vendor. Everything else I do is software-based. And it really doesn't matter whether it's "in the cloud", or "on premise". My job role stays the same. So I save a whole 15 minutes a year on not having to swap drives.
What you will see with "cloud", just like "virtualization", is a maturation of the technology's use inside a company. Not every workload is appropriate for virtualization, and not every workload will be appropriate nor cost effective in the cloud. The cloud is great for every "devops" guy who thinks they're going to write the next Facebook, Amazon, or Netflix--but yet again, for 99% of companies out there, workloads are entirely static. There's just little need for "SUPER HYPER SCALE AUTOSCALING UP AND DOWN CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE" for a vast majority of business workloads.
Specific applications are hugely appropriate for "cloud", particularly e-mail (and I say this as an Exchange Administrator). And for these "we need this up 110% of the time" applications, they'll find that if the "cloud vendor" has a problem there's nobody they can call to fix the issue. And never underestimate the value of management having someone that they can call to "look at the issue right away at 2:30AM". This need will keep a lot of folks employed.
Finally, you can't really depreciate cloud assets like you can capital expenses. So really, again, you're ultimately just comparing the cost of operating a datacenter versus the cloud technology. And you can already not worry about operating your own datacenter by simply using a colocated one.
So at the end of the day, no matter how much technology changes. No, the 'devops' revolution isn't actually going to happen, and being able to swap a drive or add some ram will still be a necessary skill.
"The cloud" is not a magic carpet, and there are a lot of organizations who will get burned by falling for all the hype. I personally know a cloud based service provider that actually believed the marketing crap on reliability. When their cloud provider (one of the big two) crashed they had no backup and no recovery plan either. They were flat on their back for a week, and were still picking up the pieces a month after that. One more of those and they might just shut their doors.
So here is another fad, and the inevitable backlash will come when it fails to deliver. So how dumb do you have to be to announce the start of a brand new shiny paradigm shift that will make everything really different in a blink of an eye. Grow up.
Why is Snark Required?
At our school, here's the list of stuff we pushed into the cloud in the last few years:
Student information system (attendance, grades, IEPs, lesson plans - the lot). This eliminated an RDP server farm and a couple of SQL servers.
Email - this eliminated a couple of Exchange Servers.
Student data storage and applications - Google Apps eliminated most of our Windows and Mac student workstations. Chromebooks are cheap and easy.
Firewalls/VPN - management of these devices is now in the cloud - goodbye to local firmware updates and far more flexible provisioning of devices.
MDM - no longer in-house.
In each case we realized cost savings simply due to sharing someone else's infrastructure instead of home-brewing our own. Security concerns in the cloud are overblown by those trying to save their jobs. The fact is that most small to medium size businesses can not afford to have the security talent that most cloud companies have.
We don't make our own water or power - why should we try to build all of our IT?
I can see the writing on the wall, from the perspective of having my first IT job in 1983... It's over.
No one should really seek to enter a non development position in IT. Because it is being snuffed out by "big computing cloud services" and the "appliancezation" of IT infrastructure. There will always be some high end jobs around. But the numbers (and the pay) are shrinking- fast.
So pack it up kiddies. Almost 30 years of booming industry will be evaporating in 5 to 7 years.
It is truly time to find something else to do.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Got laid off yesterday from an IT job I'd had for almost 15 years. Small company so I did a lot of things, from hardware to software to physical security, to sweeping the floors to to taking boxes of mail to the post office at midnight. If it needed to be done, I was the guy to get,
So now this middle-aged man is suddenly out of work and looking at an IT field that is already vastly different than it was even five years ago much less fifteen. I don't have a clue what I am going to do. What I know how to do is of rapidly decreasing value and/or there are kids who will do it cheaper.
I have no idea what I am going to do. Savings and severance will carry for a while but I've got to make a pivot to do something entirely different which pays well. My job may be gone but naturally the bills aren't.
Sig for hire.
Information Technology covers an incredibly wide range of careers, only a small portion of which are system/network administration related. Yes, in some organizations, the "cloud" may reduce the need for traditional SAs, but it is simply the latest in a long-term trend of reduction in force for that sector.
Automation has already decimated the SA workforce. Long gone are the days when companies needed armies of SAs to maintain datacenters of servers. The datacenters are still there, but are being maintained by much smaller teams of SAs using automation rather than manpower. Many large corporations who haven't (and won't) embrace the cloud, have already gotten rid of their SA staff, relying instead on vendors like HP to provide both hardware and SA level support as a bundled package. There are still SAs, of course, but they increasingly work for one of the main vendors, rather than being distributed throughout many corporations.
It's not that we are denying it. It's that we have seen it before.
Windows NT was going to eliminate the need for corporate IT. It is so simple that the secretary can manage the system. (Yes, Microsoft sales used that as a selling point)
Central server management was going to eliminate corporate IT. It would be so simple you just have to hire a person to push a button and the problem is fixed.
Self Healing systems are going to eliminate the need for Corporate IT. The systems will detect an issue and heal without the need for IT personnel.
Outsourcing to India will eliminate the need for Corporate IT. You outsource all your systems and management to a data center and share the cost of the infrastructure while getting the best of the best to work on it.
Now, Clouds are going to eliminate the need for Corporate IT.
History shows that each has been wrong. Dont misunderstand, each did some small part of what they claimed but over time it all becomes more expensive and less productive.
Clouds are no different!
Someone has to assemble these computers and repair them, replace the hard drives etc.
With cloud you're paying overhead and profits on all of the things your IT guy has to do anyway. Your virtual host still needs hard drives and expansions and software updates. Swapping a hard drive once in a while is not a big deal.
Cloud is great if you only need very small quantities of something, perhaps for testing or a resource you only use once in a while. If your core business is dependent on it, unless you have a small company that can't afford a full time IT guy, you pretty much can host, colocate or rent your own stuff cheaper than an entire cloud stack.
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Back in the day (60s,70s,80s) "The Cloud" was called "Timesharing" on Mainframes. "The cloud" does not eliminate infrastructure, it just moves it to another company that you pay fees to. There will always be IT pros "pulling all-nighters, swapping in hard drives or upgrading systems", but they will be working for the cloud hosting companies (and probably be offshore). Also, chances are that companies with stable infrastructure needs that don't expand and contract all that much (which is most companies) would of saved money overall if they owned their own equipment instead of renting capacity from a cloud company. After all, the cloud company has to pay for all the same things *and* make a profit (often a very substantial profit), which will be reflected in their fees.
"The Cloud" is a buzzword created to fool executives into paying for Other People's servers. Executives see it as some magical technology that is fool proof and infallible.
The term should be eradicated, preferably with fire.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.