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!

 

[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)

 

[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

 

[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.

 

[Shaz]sigh[]

I've been re-pondering this lately and I may have been hasty.

From an Enteprise POV, until the Opex wins are proven, the SLAs are in place and achievable, the performance is shown and the standards open then the Enterprise will probably adopt an approach of 'borrowing' the best from the public cloud and basing the private cloud upon them.

For SMBs, the Opex wins seem to already be there. Still need someone to manage the systems ofc but no kit, no dc, no power, no cooling.... mm.