I found the following to be very informative, and something I adapted and subsequently felt that needed to be shared. Enjoy!
In speaking to many IT folk around the world, most often, they have an uderlying, perpetual fear that they are being stripped of their jobs. However, much worse, many people are calling their projects ugly - these projects being the systems they have given their lives to keep running are now, more than ever, perceived as obsolete. With this in mind, its no wonder that people, IT especially grow in their skepticism about the cloud.
However, there is a flaw in this mindset, because now more than ever, worldwide, there is a great opportunity to grab hold of the cloud rather than push it away.
Dating back to the very first computers, IT constantly evolves. For many everyday consumers, it became annoying that the computer they bought yesterday is tomorrow's obsolete - not to mention the ever-growing shrinking of technological devices - mainframe, Mini, PC, Cloud, mobile. And currently, we are right in the middle of one of the largest paradigm shifts of our generation - the PC era to the Cloud era. The BYOD and smartphone era is rapidly approaching, but we can address that later.
In the same manner that my Windows 95 skills are all but useless now, we are seeing that on-premise skills are not as relevant as they once were - something that some groups have a harder time accepting than others as technology evolves.
Many companies go out in search of guidance as to whether or not the cloud is right for them. In many cases they are met with a automatically, sometimes planned response, that on-premise is the way to go. However, the customer is asking back, "can/could we use the Cloud for this?" In some cases, a businesses highly customized needs are not a good fit for the cloud, but where it is, it is flying "off the shelf."
However, this still leaves the question we started with, namely, what will the IT department look like in the future, and what will IT personnel be engaged in?
Well, the best answer, and perhaps the best news for IT is that cloud computing has the ability to revitalize IT in business. IT will prove itself more vital to businesses in the future, not less. Why, you ask?
Because the cloud delivers faster time-to-value compared to every other type of technology, and in most cases, at significantly less costs than other forms. To clarify, your company's cloud-based solutions are returning value, and soliving problems, faster than ever thought possible.
What does this mean? In many lights, the IT department of tomorrow could be bigger, because more technology is inevitably going to mean more people. But was activities those people are engaged in on a daily basis remains in question - something that is predicted to be much different than today. However, it is important to remember here, that regardless of whatever activities tomorrow's IT is engaged in, they will still hold a fundamental truth and their core, and that is solving problems via technology - the only difference is how they get to the solution.
The end result of this is that we will more than likely see more IT personnel with very specific IT skills - wither than means a wide variety of skills that use systems to solve common business problems, or an extrmemly specialized depth of understanding in a particular systems.
Nevertheless, IT folk need not worry - you and your compadres are being more important - not the other way around. What you do won't be different - it is just how you do it WILL be.
Think the cloud is right for you? Learn more about SAP's cloud options at http://nbs-us.com/sap_cloud.
