the future of IT?
 

So, this guy, Nicholas Carr, thinks that IT departments will be totally obsolete in their current form in the near future. Though I agree with him perhaps on data centers, but it will not eliminate the IT department. They will always need someone on site who can fix things when they break immediately, not wait until some contractor can get over.

Also, data storage is but one part of IT.

Thoughts?

article: http://www.networkworld.com/news/200...r-it-dead.html

I think most of the people who write these things couldn't troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag, and have very little practical knowledge of the subject. :rolleyes:

Craig, I whole heartily agree with you. I mean when people think that the user base can support themselves I have to laugh out loud. Those people who think that need to work help desk for a few weeks, then they will understand how IT is needed.

I see his point on data centers being outsourced but even then you are entrusting your data (which is precious, and sometimes private) to a third party. That just makes my spine tingle with all the security loop holes of just allowing third party to handle your data. It is third party, you can't manage any of them and you have to hope that they are managed in a way that will protect the data.

I mean I have been asking my bosses for a few years now to do some sort of social engineering training, so that at least our phone support staff gets an idea that the person on the other end may not be who you think they are. I mean no one trains for that stuff.

I know when it hits the fan over here at my work I am pretty much the first person that gets called. When people want software pushed out to their client machines it ends up on my desk, and when someone can't figure out what they are doing, they call me. Not that I know everything, I just have been doing this for almost 9 years now.

aaaahhhh the it department.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt9j80Jkc_A

There will always be a need for help desk, but a large part of many IT departments wants nothing to do with help desk. Server administrators often don't want any contact with end users. These are the people that give IT a bad reputation, and I think that the article tangentially touches on it by talking about the outsourcing of data centers.

From a client/end user perspective, the server administrator is often the least useful/helpful member of IT. To make matters worse, help desk is usually under paid, which is why level 1 support is almost always useless. That gives IT another black eye. Insisting on "standardizing" on Microsoft operating systems for the past 27 years has turned out to be a less than optimal choice, which doesn't make IT look any better. These things by themselves wouldn't be big problems, but taken together, they encourage companies an individuals to look for other solutions.

Even if there weren't good reasons to outsource your data center, there will come a point where either (a) the limits of centralized processing is reached or (b) computing power/capacity exceeds the need.

In the case of (a), distributed computing projects have already shown that clusters of computers are much better at solving some kinds of problems than the largest, most powerful supercomputers.

For (b), well, let's face it, business is about buying raw materials, producing something, and selling it. There's only so much computing power needed to do that, and once it's reached and the software is written and refined, there won't be much need to change, and that's where much of the need for IT has always been.

If IT is going to survive, it needs to place more emphasis on customer service, and the only way to do that is to make the help desk the desired job instead of the one everyone wants to get away from.

I don't see that being an IT issue, that is easily more of a management issue. Of course your system admin can't be bothered with every request from an end user. Are you kidding me? Sometimes I have to shut my door and lock it and not answer my phone so I can do some admin work, because users are constantly bothering me with every problem they have.

Which is why you filter everything through a help desk. Is it the best solution?Most likely not. Could it be improved, sure I would say so.

A lot of it has to do with company policy and not the IT department. I can't begin to even explain to you how many things people think I am responsible for. I got asked recently to change the domain name of an internal website. Like I would be in charge of that? We have a web master for that stuff, and they are too busy to be bothered with requests directly for something as pointless as a domain name change.

Also, no one trains anyone how to do anything really. Training sucks hands down. I have taken on 5 or 6 more responsibilities lately because technology leaders in my organization (the ones that do have some admin access) can't figure out how to do anything. Therefore, I do their job and mine. They can't even figure out how to reset passwords, even if I email out explicit instructions with screen shots they still can't figure it out. Its not my job to train them, and I would never have time to spend a whole day or days running training seminars to train all 6,000+ of our employees.

Standardizing is a good thing, and its not like anyone really had a choice but to go with MS. You don't realize this and you will never realize this cwtnospam. Your choices were Novell, and then MS back before 2000, and a post 2000 your choice is MS. Unix and Linux have yet to make any viable and good end user product with enterprise backing. I am not saying that they don't have it, but they don't have one with the robustness of what MS/AD/Exchange in one set standard package, with the easy to use desktop of Windows. Sure there are some exceptions and some other options have popped up for certain niche markets, like Citrix, however its not like you have a choice. Apple didn't have a decent enterprise level product till about panther era, and even then it was flaky. Tiger is great and Leopard is improved a ton, however they are coming into the game late. Apple's print server services still suck really bad, and their integration into existing networks is better, but far from perfect.

When you look at it, the money it would cost to change everything over into a different infrastructure, hope - no pray that all your valuable data will transfer over to that new platform with no issues, then add in the down time and the cost of training all your users, NO ONE has a choice. Unless, you are building a brand new enterprise from the ground up right now, which is also very rare.

Now, in retrospect I can actually say that I am running almost a 100% mac network with a mac backbone at my work. All our users are converted, all of them have macs, we are a complete OD system for user database and for authentication. yes it works, yes Apple has a good enterprise product, however its a little late in the game to say that there has always been another choice. I manage 6,000 to 7,000 macs and about 20 or so xserves with the population being most macbooks. Before hand I was managing 10,000 computers with only about a 5% mac population, all running HP proliant servers with either win2k3 server or Novell Netware 6.5 and some SuSe Linux servers.

Every day I have issues with our Apple enterprise solution, some remind me of the same crap I went through supporting MS 2K3 servers, and we still have a novell container on our network which I can use. however, its purely trial by fire. That kind of support you can not out source, its not trained, it is not taught by any trade school or university, and the only people who know how to do it is the people that are currently working on it.

I would say I have some experience to back up what I am talking about.

Yes, it does. Company policy also applies to other fields, as the article indicated. People in the 1950's used to worry that computers were going to take their jobs. They didn't need to worry, but we do today. The fact is that more can be done with fewer people, which means that less needs to be done, which means that more of what needs to be done can be done by computers....and so on, all while computers continue to get more powerful. We're getting to a point where companies don't need very many employees, but they're forgetting that those employees are also customers. ;)
Standardizing within limits is a good thing. Just ask any farmer if it's a good idea to stay with the same crops year after year in the same fields. What he'll tell you is that you make your crops vulnerable by doing it.

And there have always been choices. Active Directory and Exchange are red herrings because they didn't exist when the choice was made to standardize on MS, and MS consisted of a lousy 16 bit OS that didn't even have a gui! Comparing twenty+ year old technology to today's AD/Exchange and XP is disingenuous at best.

You're thinking about what you see today, but that's not what the article is about. Computers in 20 years will be more different from today's systems than today's systems are from those of 20 years ago. Think long term.

Well....

I am not going to bother actually, you'll just spin it around

I work in the field, have worked in the field, and have worked with just about every major platform, and all I can say is you are wrong about some things, and the rest are your opinions.

So then can you point me to a version of AD or Exchange from 1990 then? How about a 32-bit version of Windows from 1990?
I'll make it easier: I had a Dove Fax modem in 1989. Show me who made one for the PC back then. Answer: No one. It would have been nearly impossible to make it work on a standard PC.

You're in the business now, but your knowledge of where it has been is limited, and that limits your concept of where it's going.

I don't see how me knowing ancient archaic technology affects my ability or knowledge to do a job. If anything it has hurt you, and given you dogmatic tunnel vision. Business and enterprise are not linear, there is no beginning and no end. It changes daily. There will always be a need for skilled workers who can get the job done. I agree with the original article that some things could be out sourced, however, even the author of the article openly admits these out sources are very crappy and still need major overhaul to make it happen. Since nothing in technology or in business is linear it is nearly impossible to guess what is going on.

In 1989 how many computer users were there? How many businesses had a computer for every employee? Your comparisons are delusive and have no real point other than that of what your opinion is. Sure you can cast a shadow of a doubt on just about everything, but when your server crashes and you have to wait for some outsourced IT person to show up, with their cookie cutter training from the contract company we will see who is right and who is wrong.

in the mid 90s AD/exchange didn't exist, it was called NDS from Novell. They pioneered modern networking, not MS not Apple, not anyone. Of course Unix had been doing most of it in the beginning but not at the same level or the same intuitiveness that Novell brought to the table. MS stole it, made it better, changed some names and things around, and out did Novell. Novell, just could not keep up, and they decided to go a different route and they bought out SuSe Linux.

Perhaps you haven't kept up with what has really been going on in the last 20 years.

Once again, it's not about you our your job. The article is about where IT jobs are headed in particular, and where jobs in general are headed as well.

Millions upon millions. That's how MS became so successful, so rapidly. Large corporations were buying tens of thousands of computers per month per company from the early 80s onward.


Who created it doesn't matter, other than to show that standardizing, if it had been as successful as many in IT at the time wanted, would have precluded Novel from creating it, and so you wouldn't have AD today.

The fact is that it's still a red herring. It's only in the last ten years or so that AD has become important to businesses.

I have made no effort follow you around in your job, but that doesn't mean that I haven't seen what's going on. I've seen it from both sides of the desk, and I'm telling you that when you "have to shut my door and lock it and not answer my phone so I can do some admin work, because users are constantly bothering me" you make it that much more likely that nobody will care if/when your job is outsourced, which of course, makes it that much more likely that it will happen. Nobody outside of IT cares about your admin work. To them, that is not part of your job, and no amount of reasoned logic and sound facts is going to change their minds.

I can't see outsourcing as viable. With angry clients waiting for solutions do you really want to be at the mercy of a third party for whom your problems are somewhere on their to-do list?

As the person in between the user and the admin (that first and only tier between user and admin at my job) I must say, they both need to learn what the other does.

Yes, a user should be able to do what they need to do and it should be seamless and this is the job of the admin. No excuses. That's why they get paid and the users don't care about excuses.

Now, users, who aren't going to change (so, really, this is just a venting rant) need to remember that when someone wants to talk with them or asks them to do something they usually need to:
1) wait
2) make an appointment with someone
3) explain why they want to talk to the user
4) let the user prioritize when they will see the person

So, users... try not yelling when we ask you for these four things to get started.

Would most users allow a person to fly into their office and demand something? Anything? Most would not, because the ones that do that are the ones that would call security if someone came to their office doing the same.

If the stereotypical admin didn't treat the user with such disdain maybe the user would show a wee bit more "you work for me"-ness.

Either way, it doesn't matter.

In the end... what costs the least and makes the most profit will be how it is until there is a way to cut more costs and make more profit and then people will still be arguing over whether or not people should be taken seriously when they type Micro$oft.

Thanks for bringing that up so I could rant.

My pleasure. ;)

As some one who's been in both positions, I know neither side is likely to change. My main point was that as technology improves, customer service becomes more important in business no matter what your job is, and IT in general has never had a good reputation in that area. That's what makes the article more plausible than perhaps it should be.

I think this highly depends. In the private sector yes, this is typical, in government its not typical. I worked in the private sector for over 6 years in IT, then went over to government. All my experience on the government side is way better. People are happy to see me rather than cringe. This is because in the private sector we charged by the hour, and yes we did contract work (outsourcing). Showing up at someone's site and knowing that you are billing them 150 to 350 an hour makes them very cranky. It is a customer service night mare. It sucks. Also, walking into something you don't work with every day means you need to spend at least 30 minutes to get the feel of the infrastructure. I remember going to a small business and they had screwed up their WiFi network so bad that I ultimately had to scrap everything and rebuild it. Come time to bill the client they were not happy that I had to tack on an extra hour just to figure out and survey the site. I don't just jump into things with out getting a feel for what the previous person did and most importantly why they did it. So, in the private sector when you saw me I was charging you money, in the public sector there is no charging/billing so people are happy to see me. Its much much better in the public sector.

This is why you see things like the SNL skit of Nick Burns, because some people just get burned out. Customer service is a dying thing in our life, I have yet to find good customer service anywhere. I hate calling cell phone support, ISP support, warranty support for any product, it all sucks. Out sourcing has made it worse.

Well, I am know for a fact that Apple and Microsoft are both in it for the money. So, I don't really see a huge difference in their business models, but I do see some minor differences. Apple has started to out source some of their internal support, even though, they are still contracted through an American company on internal support ichat, I get very foreign names. I don't think Ackbahr is American. The major difference is, you can no longer call them. Everything is done over web based ichat clients. I do think Apple is better at keeping it all in our own country (USA) than most technology companies but I think they also hire and train the cookie cutter tier 1 support. Just like everyone else.

Now, I do know a local company that is ran very well. They are a small company, like 8 employees total. They are actually the whole IT department for a lot of smaller businesses and school systems. We have contracted them out for big projects and for our massive deployments. The lead guy that is a Unix wizard, I call him when I have major issues with OD, or with whatever and it takes him a while to get back to me. So, even though their company is great in my opinion and they run very efficiently, there is still no way he could ever replace anyone on site.

From now until 'ever' is a very, very long time. Just think about what's in the reasonably foreseeable future: at some point over the next 5 to 10 years, the low end Mac will be more powerful than the new Mac Pro announced today. Hard drives will probably only be used on servers, having been completely replaced by SSDs on personal computers, and partially replaced on servers! Broadband speeds will continue to get faster, and so video chatting/remote support will become more common.

Those are just a few of the relatively short term advances we can expect, not to mention improvements in the systems so that less manual configuration is required. Remember getting onto the internet 10 years ago? I just set up my wife's uncle's new iMac for him from 120 miles away! How? I had him log in, turn on remote desktop, and then I logged in and showed him what he needed. That wouldn't have happened in 1998. By 2018, it will be a completely different ball game.

Yes, I am well aware of remote support. I don't travel across town to look at a server or a desktop, I remote in first. However, remote support has many limits. Plus from a security stand point I would rather have my internal employees access my technology remotely over a third party. I wouldn't feel comfortable giving third party admin passwords.

I still have end-users who don't like to have me support them remotely because it "freaks them out".

We have an entire generation that was raised with cars in the driveway but don't know how to change the oil. Many people never bother to investigate beyond the glowing lights of the dashboard....computers are no different in this aspect.

IT will only meet the author's predicted demise when people begin to understand the tools they use, read documentation, and think before clicking.

...and the day that happens pigs will fly and lobsters will crawl out of my ears.

Long live PEBKAC!!!

I had an old boss that loved to call it pilot error.

I hate to generalize about this too, because generalizations are never 100% true, however, if I were to generalize about my user base over the past nine years. It would not be very good, I mean they can't even remember their own passwords.

Apple even baffles me. Their new server OS is very intuitive and very easy to use, however if you want to go get your ACSA, there are pretty much NO questions about how to use the GUI. Its all about command line applications, set up, security, configurations, and what applications go to what, as well as networking in general. Only a very small part is actually about how to use the GUI. Yet, Apple prides itself in being able to control everything from the GUI.

This creates a duality. In one hand it makes it easy for someone who is not technically savvy to set up and use. In the opposite hand it gives people false ideas that they can administer a server with out knowing the underlying technology.

I don't think the end user will ever replace IT, until technology becomes so reliable it doesn't need to be maintained or repaired, and everything out of the box works like it should and its 100% secure. Until that day, I don't see any of that happening.

You wouldn't, but a CEO would. To him/her, there's little difference between an employee admin and an outsourced admin, other than cost.

Yes, and until recently, I would have sworn my wife's uncle, who will retire in about two years, would be one of them! People's attitudes about computers are changing.

There will always be clueless users who will need help, but they're going to get used to getting their help from the internet.

Maybe, but what is stopping a third party who supports lets say a competitor of yours and then gets offered to trade information for money. If only the third party has access and no one internally does, then who is going to make sure all data and assets are secure?

If you are going to have someone audit the third party you might as well just have one in house. At least then you can manage them by company policy and it is in the employee's best interest to do a good job for promotion and so they don't get fired.

Its a huge security loop hole, read up on some Kevin Mitnick.

The same thing that stops you from selling information to a competitor.
That may be, but it has already happened as there are lots of co-location farms out there now, and the trend will continue to grow.

Sure that is a niche market though. Data centers and data hosting services are nothing new, they have been around for a long time. That is only a small part of IT though.

The article uses that to say that eventually end users will take care of everything. I don't see that happening in my life time.

It's a niche that keeps growing, and although it's been around a long time, relatively recent developments make it much more appealing to businesses. High speed internet access, for example, is almost to the point where you can get to your server from anywhere. By the time the last 56K modem is finally shut off, it may not be a niche market anymore.

I don't see users taking care of everything either, but I do see them logging into online tech support and getting their answers from somebody who may be half a world away. They do it in these forums every day!

Sure, I can totally see level one and first response tech support being out sourced because no one wants to do it, as well as no one wants to put in their time any more either. They just want to get hired at a high level position.

However, I still think that a good percentage of companies will keep things internals.

Which companies? The ones that have sent entire divisions off shore so they can pay pennies per hour? As companies in the 80s and 90s sent blue collar jobs off shore, middle management thought it was safe. Today we see that they aren't safe, and as their jobs move, fewer servers and desktops are needed here. If you're willing to ship manufacturing, marketing, and tier 1 support to another country, I don't know what would stop you from moving server administration to a server farm and using their tech support.

I suppose there is also the argument that centralised data storage can be better managed from a green perspective

The Green Grid

You always have to have someone on site to crank a screw driver, replace hardware, run cables, do physical work, deploy, etc. If you are a organization/company that is constantly changing, you can't just roll out new software remotely and call it good to go. I needs to be configured, tested on your equipment in your infrastructure. Like I said, yes, I agree with you lots of stuff can be done remotely but its not a viable solution for everything. Very easily can you test something out over seas on your network and then deploy it on another network and it not work. Then what? Remote troubleshooting?

I don't think the world economy will support out sourcing for too long either from western business. I mean China is already booming as well as India and most of Asia is following. I just got done watching a documentary on main land china the other day. It said something crazy like 6,000 cars are being shipped into Shanghai every day. Their economy is growing and socially they are changing. I look at is as they are changing socially like we did from the 1940s to present, but instead of doing it in 70 years they will do it in 10 to 15. Plastic surgery is already a very common thing over in Asia and it is every where. Teaching English over there is a huge job. I have two friends in Vietnam right now teaching english and they are getting paid well, and almost all their expenses are covered. So, what happens when their economy catches up with the rest of the world and they have a highly educated english speaking work force? They will build their own companies and their own enterprises. Then it won't be affordable anymore.

Correct centralized data is great for many reasons, not just saving power. With the cost of running a SAN I can see that being outsourced, until the technology is so cheap and more efficient that a small cluster of servers can do the same thing.

There will always be another poor area where they can get cheap labor to turn the screws or run cable. Those things won't be done here.

My father in-law told me a story about an old fisherman and a young fisherman. The old fisherman said that there aren't any big fish to be caught anymore. The young fisherman said, "Not true! I caught a 75 pounder the other day." The old fisherman replied that in the old days a big fish was at least 200 pounds.

My point is that everything is relative. IT today is smaller than it was in the 80s, and it will be smaller still in twenty years. Gone? Probably not, but if you could take an IT guy from 1988 and transport him to 2028, I think he'd take one look at IT and pronounce it dead.

I've always worked as outsourced IT, except for one 16-month stint in-house (which I'd never do again). Some say it's not viable because you want to reach someone immediately if you need help. Some say in-house support is not viable because you want to reach someone immediately if you need help... The in-house guys take vacations and such, while outsourced organizations typically make sure to provide an SLA and backup staff. Right now I work for a number of companies who depend on me completely for all of their technical work, from phone systems to networks to video. In about half of them we replaced an in-house person or two. In every case, the in-house guy was stuck at a learning level and not progressing, and we bring in a fresh view with higher knowledge of technology. It started to happen to me when I worked for one company; you stop looking for other technologies and options, focusing only on what is used in your current situation. It's easy then to be out-innovated by an outsourced guy.

The Ghost of IT Past:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBIVRwvUeE