Will the cloud take your job?

[Shaz]sigh[]

Simple question, once the standard API is out there (vCloud?) and once security has been defined, will you lose your job to the cloud?

I think, in the short to midterm, SMB will flock to the cloud for compute and storage, I also think Enterprises may use something like Azure for development services but keeping the majority of stuff within a private cloud, maybe utilising public cloud providers for DR VDI etc.

Long term.... scary thought.

This all obviously depends on bandwidth explosion.

Discuss!

 

[brainchylde]

Once we have robots, will everyone be out of work?

No.

Computers are dumb and the end user is [often] dumber. Just remember that.

I just think how IT has grown as new technologies have evolved. Until we stop evolving (in technological terms), I can't see IT jobs being non-existent.

 

[dangerstat]

Cloud computing will have an impact on IT support jobs. It makes sense right now to move most storage and processing capability to cloud solutions (given the right bandwidth - and even just national inhouse solutions for large enough companies). But of course there's always the need for those to walk around fixing mundane problems I suppose (password resets ec).

To be totally honest I think for anything above SME's all major services will be handled "in the cloud".

So I guess yes lots will lose their jobs. But, in this instance, it's actually a good thing.

But the "cloud" is soooo far off being production stable (well in my experience) I don't think it's going to happen soon. But it will.

 

[bigredshark]

Nope, it'll require bigger, faster, more complex networks at both the datacenter level and for user access - and I fully intent to make a lot of money designing them!

But I do expect a lot of corporate IT departments will suffer serious cuts, desktop support is fairly safe, it's the higher end stuff which will be hit...

 

[mdjmcnally]

As my main area is security then the cloud won't take my job as will still need to secure the links between yourself and the cloud(s)

There will still be jobs to do with Cloud computing, may require some reskilling but shouldn't be a negative thing. After all people will still be required to build and maintain/update the cloud infrastructure.

People said jobs would be lost with Virtualization and this is just the next logical step in the process, however I wouldn't trust a business to full cloud yet.

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Diversify !

What paid me £100 an hour in the good old .bomb glory days wouldn't pay me jack now.

This is what I don't get, people who just stick with one skill *doh*

For me I keep moving...

What was once HTML ->cgi -> perl -> Content Management Systems -> Systems(Solaris) -> j2ee -> Back to Systems(linux debian) -> php (which my mates were PTSL - to which I answered the market wants it) -> Applications and Systems Architect -> LAMP on the cloud -> Now I'm doing drupal for crying out loud

As you can see it's varied and personally my love is perl but I've not had a perl job for 10 years albeit I still get to use it on contracts

So go with the market - If you think the cloud is going to take your job - skill yourself up in something like deploying LAMP in the cloud/performance tuning apps/memcaching etc etc.

Just don't be a potato

 

[Shaz]sigh[]

Diversify !

What paid me £100 an hour in the good old .bomb glory days wouldn't pay me jack now.

This is what I don't get, people who just stick with one skill *doh*

For me I keep moving...

What was once HTML ->cgi -> perl -> Content Management Systems -> Systems(Solaris) -> j2ee -> Back to Systems(linux debian) -> php (which my mates were PTSL - to which I answered the market wants it) -> Applications and Systems Architect -> LAMP on the cloud -> Now I'm doing drupal for crying out loud

As you can see it's varied and personally my love is perl but I've not had a perl job for 10 years albeit I still get to use it on contracts

So go with the market - If you think the cloud is going to take your job - skill yourself up in something like deploying LAMP in the cloud/performance tuning apps/memcaching etc etc.

Just don't be a potato

Applications architecture and infrastructure architecture are very different things. In the future you will just move to applications based on a framework rather than a standard OS, no biggie for you

 

[Shaz]sigh[]

Nope, it'll require bigger, faster, more complex networks at both the datacenter level and for user access - and I fully intent to make a lot of money designing them!

But I do expect a lot of corporate IT departments will suffer serious cuts, desktop support is fairly safe, it's the higher end stuff which will be hit...

Also interesting. The cloud often obfuscates the back end, including storage and networking. Both Cisco and EMC (and others I'm sure) are aiming to make their products... more intelligent, self managing if you will.

Will be interesting.

As for desktop, I'm not sure, as desktops move from the traditional model of a machine bound to a user to a user bound to a set of services abstracted from any sort of physical bounds, I think we'll see a more reliable user experience thus reducing your desktop guys.

As for me, I'm an architect, I'd be working on private cloud designs most likely. So... either move to a provider and/or vendor is a safe bet.

 

[Shaz]sigh[]

As my main area is security then the cloud won't take my job as will still need to secure the links between yourself and the cloud(s)

There will still be jobs to do with Cloud computing, may require some reskilling but shouldn't be a negative thing. After all people will still be required to build and maintain/update the cloud infrastructure.

People said jobs would be lost with Virtualization and this is just the next logical step in the process, however I wouldn't trust a business to full cloud yet.

Cloud security is an interesting one, an object model with federated trust. It's still being worked on but it will be v interesting once standardised.

I don't expect all jobs to go, I'm thinking.... 60% longterm (nice statistic eh)

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Applications architecture and infrastructure architecture are very different things. In the future you will just move to applications based on a framework rather than a standard OS, no biggie for you

Of course they are different - It didn't happen in a single job role

 

[Shaz]sigh[]

Of course they are different - It didn't happen in a single job role

Nice post count by the way.

The point is I could move to a development role now, however, it would take a good few years to get the sort of experience that I'd need to get any sort of 'proper' work and regard.

And the jack of all trades master of none motto still exists, even though I do try and have my fingers in all pies

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Nice post count by the way.

The point is I could move to a development role now, however, it would take a good few years to get the sort of experience that I'd need to get any sort of 'proper' work and regard.

And the jack of all trades master of none motto still exists, even though I do try and have my fingers in all pies

Well I'm not an expert in anything and that really is my point but I can hold myself in any working environment - you just have to look around you at the quality of contractors around for comparison.

Overall exceptional developers are few and far between. I've worked in a lot of places and can honestly say that I've not no met more than 5(at most 7) uber strong developers. I used to want to be like them but imho you're just pigeon holing yourself and likely to fall. Unfortunately they fell whilst I moved on and maintained an above average stance in whatever field I've been working in.

All I'm trying to say is that it shouldn't take you a few years to get there, if you're going to spend that much time then your field will be out of date and you're back to square one

EDIT: Above all try to enjoy your field and you'll find many many rewards

 

[slylittlefox]

And the jack of all trades master of none motto still exists, even though I do try and have my fingers in all pies

Not entirely true. What do you think consultants are? Typically, they won't have oodles of knowledge in one specific arena, but they'll know how all the different technologies (existing and emerging) can be put to work.

There's very good money in consultancy, and a big part of it relies on professionalism and how you deal with clients, not on how many years experience you have in PHP etc.

 

[Shaz]sigh[]

Not entirely true. What do you think consultants are? Typically, they won't have oodles of knowledge in one specific arena, but they'll know how all the different technologies (existing and emerging) can be put to work.

There's very good money in consultancy, and a big part of it relies on professionalism and how you deal with clients, not on how many years experience you have in PHP etc.

No offence but that's also what my job entails. I essentially consult for my own company, receive a brief, investigate, pilot, test, blah blah blah then hand it over to ops.

And I think third party "IT Services" companies and their consultants are going to be one of the hardest hit.

 

[slylittlefox]

No offence but that's also what my job entails. I essentially consult for my own company, receive a brief, investigate, pilot, test, blah blah blah then hand it over to ops.

And I think third party "IT Services" companies and their consultants are going to be one of the hardest hit.

Why would I take offense?

If your company specialises in bringing the benefits of virtualisation to business, and providing consultancy on the best methodologies to follow when implementing virtualisation - why would you be hit?

Using the example given by the premise of the thread, there's already people making money providing consultancy on the best way to migrate existing systems to the cloud. Once that 'wave' is over, money can then be made from consultancy based work that looks to improve the efficiency of all the systems based in the cloud, thus saving the client millions by shaving a GB of RAM usage over a year

IaaS/SaaS et al just presents a new way for you to teach people how to save/make money in a different environment.

As Aura said, diversifying and changing to meet the demands of the marketplace will ensure you or your company don't get left behind, no matter what the latest 'IT sector killing' technology is. No big technology company still exists that kept to one precise sector of the market.

No offense

 

[Lanz]

Personally, I cant see directors willing to let 3rd party suppliers have access to all their corp data.

Until the current 30'somethings who are right now working in the field, developing these types of technologies, until they themselves become directors or managers who can pull the strings, then I dont see a quick shift into Cloud for most big businesses.

Any nonsensative data might get migrated onto the cloud, as an example, many universities are letting google etc supply their student mail systems, but at the moment these uni's wouldnt dream of also getting their staff mail managed in the way. There's just too many privacy concerns.

 

[bigredshark]

Personally, I cant see directors willing to let 3rd party suppliers have access to all their corp data.

Until the current 30'somethings who are right now working in the field, developing these types of technologies, until they themselves become directors or managers who can pull the strings, then I dont see a quick shift into Cloud for most big businesses.

Any nonsensative data might get migrated onto the cloud, as an example, many universities are letting google etc supply their student mail systems, but at the moment these uni's wouldnt dream of also getting their staff mail managed in the way. There's just too many privacy concerns.

I can see it happening, quite a few large corps have outsourced their desktop support and large portions of their application support. I've designed and built a private cloud platform (before the cloud terminology was fashionable too) for a notable FTSE100 company which essentially moved all their data into a third party datacenter on hardware they essentially leased.

Their admins still set access privileges so security was much as it was before. It's all still firewalled and having to specify firewall rules likely improved the slightly ad-hoc firewall config they'd had in house.

In some ways it's even better, it's easy to sue somebody contracted to deliver services to you, harder to do much at all to an individual sysadmin who's wondered off with your data...

 

[daz]

What will be big selling will be "private clouds" and the implementation and consultancy of those. Although possibly not truely "cloud" (i suppose it would just be mass virtualization of their in-house servers) i can see it being very attractive for quite a few companies/

 

[bigredshark]

What will be big selling will be "private clouds" and the implementation and consultancy of those. Although possibly not truely "cloud" (i suppose it would just be mass virtualization of their in-house servers) i can see it being very attractive for quite a few companies/

Yeah, already is, the idea of leasing a whole bunch of servers in a datacenter to replace your in house kit and calling it a cloud to convince the board you're up the latest tech is very popular.

Still pretty secure, still saves some money but it's not really cloud computing in my mind. Not many businesses are using real cloud computing like ec2 or similar...

 

[daz]

Not many big businesses, but i think start-ups are on the case.

The only issue is that you still need someone to manage your servers for you. Even more so if you want to take advantage of the scalability and instance deployment of new VMs. With a lot of cloud providers you can scale a Virtual instance, but to actually scale your application, you'll need to deploy virtual load balancers and multiple virtual web servers. You might also need to implement a mySQL cluster. All of this takes knowledge and expertise, as well as ongoing support and management.