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And cloud software creates new technical jobs on non-technical teams to administer the applications. Look at the explosion of Salesforce.com consultants and internal jobs looking for that expertise.
Last year's cloud outages mostly resulted in firms looking to improve cloud diversity, not put all their eggs into the AWS basket.
Just wait until we have our first really noteworthy "cloud" security breach, then you'll see major firms rushing to claw back critical functions into on-premise "private cloud".
Quote:
Originally Posted by unixfed
Smaller companies with limited on-premise infrastructure tend to migrate toward cloud solutions. However, larger companies with on-site datacenters and restrictions on how data needs to be contained and handled cannot simply switch everything over. Cloud isn't taking over, and sysadmin roles will continue to exist.
I have a few customers who have gone all-in with Azure, but for the most part larger companies are choosing to keep certain functions in appliance hardware, with other compute loads going to a "private cloud" approach when designing their on-prem virtualization.
What do you think are the job implications of the "move to the cloud"?
My guesses are
# Less demand for roles like Systems Administrator, Support Engineer, etc. because the problems they solve will be automatically taken of by the cloud
# Lower barrier to entry into Software Engineer roles because they won't require as much knowledge of how computers work
I think a lot of companies are reluctant to put their data into the cloud for the same reasons many individuals are reluctant to put personal info online - security. They feel they can get what they need in house.
I work for a company that markets and supports a web server based application, and all of our customers have it installed on their own servers. Some of the companies are larger than others, and it varies from company to company regarding how they administer the server. Some have an admin for exchange server, a separate one for app server and separate one for the db server. Others combine those positions. In a few cases, the IT dept mgr is the DBA, and being a Mgr., they often aren't good DBAs .
Therefore, if positions are eliminated, it is often due to the organization's greed, not because of the cloud.
The cloud opens other opportunities that require different skill sets.
# cloud is just a collection of servers (it used to be called thin-client -> web-portal back in the '90s). similar personnel will maintain it.
# same as server admins today; many only know how to configure abstracted dashboards. the good ones know how to pop-the-hood and fiddle around with the file-system...
We had "cloud computing" back in the '60s and 70s when you used a teletype or video terminal to dial into the university's mainframe. *Everything* was done in "the cloud" back then.
Just moved all business to the cloud last year. Nothing changed in terms of staffing or roles, new skills needed to be learned but it's all variations on existing themes, not the paradigm shift some would have you believe, unless perhaps your business is as a hosting provider of course.
What do you think are the job implications of the "move to the cloud"?
My guesses are
# Less demand for roles like Systems Administrator, Support Engineer, etc. because the problems they solve will be automatically taken of by the cloud
# Lower barrier to entry into Software Engineer roles because they won't require as much knowledge of how computers work
^ This. These roles are very commoditized. As is the infrastructure they support. So outsourcing this provides a lot of benefits if that model aligns with the business goals (and this is the KEY here as outsourcing will not work for all organizations). Infrastructure has always been a huge expense as is the folks that support it. But by outsourcing, you can remove a lot of the overhead and actually gain a lot more efficiency (BC/DR is built in, as is support coverage, etc.).
The savings can then be used for more business analytics, project management, or strategic planning. Which is what IT is become these days - more business focused and less "equipment" focused.
That said - I don't think there will be "less demand" for these positions. I think it will simply shift more to the MSPs and IaaS providers. Of course, this will potentially make that job market more competitive. Because these MSPs are depending on these roles to serve clients and tied directly to revenue, the skills requirements will likely be higher than they would for your internal IT sys admin.
Future of "cloud" is containers and microservices, an additional abstraction layers on top of virtual servers
In my experience as a network security architect, few programmers ever really got the low-level concepts of Unix-like systems, so the move to hide these away permanently from the programmers can only be an improvement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stanley-88888888
# cloud is just a collection of servers (it used to be called thin-client -> web-portal back in the '90s). similar personnel will maintain it.
# same as server admins today; many only know how to configure abstracted dashboards. the good ones know how to pop-the-hood and fiddle around with the file-system...
That was the case a few years ago, now "cloud" often refers to an additional abstraction layer on top of the virtual server, so a business would no longer have any "server admins" at all, their staff would instead manage docker containers, microservices, and compute pools.
This abstracts away much of the old school skills of server administration, now you no longer know or care about "network interfaces" and MAC addresses, or how much disk space or RAM is allocated to your instance -- you just use the resources of the cloud provider and watch your bill climb.
In my experience as a network security architect, few programmers ever really got the low-level concepts of Unix-like systems, so the move to hide these away permanently from the programmers can only be an improvement.
That was the case a few years ago, now "cloud" often refers to an additional abstraction layer on top of the virtual server, so a business would no longer have any "server admins" at all, their staff would instead manage docker containers, microservices, and compute pools.
This abstracts away much of the old school skills of server administration, now you no longer know or care about "network interfaces" and MAC addresses, or how much disk space or RAM is allocated to your instance -- you just use the resources of the cloud provider and watch your bill climb.
So when I sign in to my AWS, the Amazon data center employees create my entire "server" infrastructure and administer it for me too. Wow, I didn't know they offered that service. I mean why even offer AWS SysOps Certifications
Just moved all business to the cloud last year. Nothing changed in terms of staffing or roles, new skills needed to be learned but it's all variations on existing themes, not the paradigm shift some would have you believe, unless perhaps your business is as a hosting provider of course.
I would rather have onsite servers/facilities at the very least as a back up. What do you do if your 'cloud provider' is about to go belly up? (remembers the dot-com days when seemingly popular/big websites and services would vanish literally overnight with no mention of what was about to happen)
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Future of "cloud" is containers and microservices, an additional abstraction layers on top of virtual servers
