Posted on 07/12/2011 8:56:22 AM PDT by Orange1998
n another sign of the Internet's ability to streamline business processes and make others irrelevant, cloud computing is poised to have a serious impact on a segment of the workforce that never expected to see job cuts or a weakening in demand for its services: traditional information-technology workers.
An unintended consequence of Google, Apple, Facebook and other major tech companies building data centers in North Carolina's "Data Center Corridor" may be the accelerated obsolescence of traditional IT jobs as cloud computing and related technologies gain momentum.
Cloud computing lets businesses outsource data storage, applications, even their entire data centers to third-party vendors. The shift results in cost savings for electricity and office space, fewer calls to the help desk and fewer in-house servers for IT staffers to maintain.
Those traditional IT staffers - who have rarely lacked job opportunities - may now find it necessary to develop new skills and reposition themselves as system architects, security experts or other types of computer specialists to make it in the emerging cloud economy.
That means those football field-sized data centers between Charlotte and Asheville may herald an era of increased competition for fewer traditional IT jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at charlotteobserver.com ...
yes, outsource you company’s secrets to the chicoms.
bill clinton will help.
Hey, let's be fair.
bill clinton will help 'sell America down the river for just $1'. (fixed it for you)
ping
IT jobs? What IT jobs? No such animal anymore.
Cloud Computing brings with it a whole new set of challenges. It is a GREAT opportunity for IT professionals who keep their skills current.
While small companies can pare down their IT staffing, the Cloud companies need more IT professionals to manage their clouds. It’s more of a shift of expertise, rather than an obsolescence.
There is a big savings in the amount of resources consumed, since you don’t need as many servers. However, cloud servers tend to be larger and their cpu usage is maximized to utilize every cycle. That means these systems consume more power, but because the computes are centralized, the usage is more efficient.
I foresee, in the very near future, a bottleneck in large Cloud Companies, and a decentralization as a result. I ahve seen this centralized-vs.-distributed computing shift more than a few times in my 30 year IT career.
As soon as the centralized paradigm bottlenecks, the industry returns to the distributed model, but with newer, more efficient technology. I don’t really see much of a dip in demand for IT professionals. In fact, the demand may actually be on the rise, not in spite of the Cloud, but because of it.
The entire article is a lie.
What sane business is going to outsource their blueprint for success/profit to their future COMPETITORS??
Much ado about nothing.
the astute IT service salesperson will counter with “But can you trust your most sensitive data in the cloud?”
EXACTLY.
That is the NEXT step.
Earlier data security depended on a combination of control of physical access AND individualized programming. Although programmers might well use the same "best practices" they rarely did the same coding twice. Casual amateur hackers were almost unknown ~ even highly skilled genius level programmers had difficulty tapping stuff they shouldn't oughta.
I see a return to custom coding ~ right down at the hexadecimal level ~ simply to keep that which should be private Private!
Growth in custom programming will be driven to new heights by "cloud computing"!
Lots do. They regret it, but they do it.
Once worked for a big insurance company. Their data center amounted to the vault for the crown jewels.
They outsourced it.
A decade later they were no more.
Things ARE moving into the cloud. Sure, not everything, and sure you may choose to keep your stuff local, but the trend is unmistakeable. My guess is that this indeed IS going to be a very big deal, although of course it won’t all happen at once.
Be careful, IT folks.
Schumpeterian “Creative Destruction” runs amuck.
Another "Tech Journalist" displays his ignorance.
Obviously the solution is to own the cloud :)
First question out of all my business's customer's mouths is "Where is my data stored? What's their security procedures?"
"In the cloud", is not an adequate answer, ever.
Is "Cloud Computing" a big deal? Sure. But, it's just the next "Humongous, Game-changing thing" in the list of "humongus gamechangers" that have come down the IT pike in the last 20 (50?) years....
I remember vividly a situation with a typical IT department (well typical for our industry) when I was corporate director of engineering for a 50B/Year company.
We were creating a standardized SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system for our manufacturing operations (70 plants in USA and Canada 20+ in Europe) and the IT dept insisted that the database for this system exist only on their server.
Knowing the real world and not the world meant to make IT lives easier, I said that our system would keep a local copy of critical running data and update the main database as long as the server was up and running and we could attach.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The IT control freaks (you know the whole company works for IT right?) said that would never work and the copies would get out of sync.
Well we took a walk on the shop floor at one of the plants were the IT people had created their own similar (but smaller) system and at every piece of equipment there was an error message that it could not reach the server and critical running data was not available. Bar code information for incoming product could not be verified and running data for said product could not be captured.
Well, in the IT world you wait until they get their system running again. They saw no problem in pausing the manufacturing process until the main database was available.
In my world you run off a local copy of data you MUST have to run the equipment and as soon as the main database was available every missed transaction was immediately updated.
After that shop tour, I received no more resistance from the IT dept. We never experience databases being out of sync.
While I have met many great IT professionals there seems to be a "the company must conform to IT" mentality. We even had the corporate head of our IT department make the comment that "she'd be damned if effen customers would be allowed to download their data (PDF and other graphic files for printing) to HER network." She was soon out of a job.
Maybe some day I will see a manufacturing business that grew around an IT department, or an accounting department but I doubt it. Seems it is usually the other way around. Both have important jobs but they are not the core business.
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