Why Cloud is After Your Job
posted by Anna Mar, December 10, 2012Whatever happened to the typing pool?
From the first day that typewriters exploded on to the market in the 1860s through to the 1970s, typing pools were a common way to organize labor.
In the late 1970s, popular word processing software came along — that was the end of 100+ years of typing pools.
Like the word processor, cloud computing is a labor saving device that's likely to shake up IT careers in a big way.
Carrots and Clouds
Where do you get your carrots? Do you grow them in your backyard?In the 1880s, 49% of Americans were farmers. Most Americans got their carrots in their backyard, from a neighbor or at a farmer's market.
This is analogous to the current state of IT. Most organizations install, configure, customize, support and manage their own IT services.
Cloud computing is a fundamental shift. Instead of doing everything yourself or with the help of consultants and outsourcing partners — you'll simply purchase cloud services.
Ideally, cloud computing will mean that you don't have to worry about the details of infrastructure, platforms and software. They're all be wrapped in IT services with nice SLAs.
This has huge implications for the IT labor market.
How Cloud Will Change the IT Labor Market
Not to beat this to death ... but I have one more carrot analogy.When you take the carrots out of everyone's backyard and put them on huge farms it has two significant benefits:
1. Enables automation
2. Improves efficiencies of scale
The result is that you can make more food with far less farmers. That's exactly what's about to happen to IT.
Cloud computing drives the centralization of software, platforms and infrastructure. A business run by exclusively by public cloud services doesn't need to employ technology specialists.
Cloud will change IT careers in at least 3 significant ways:
- Demand for specialists (technical skills) will fall.
- IT departments will become fully integrated with business units.
- Technology generalists will have more career opportunities than ever before.
This is the 5th in a 12-part series of posts called How to Win at Cloud.
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