Getting caught up on current PC "technologies" after being out of field 5 years

jds8086

I hold an A+ cert but the last job i had doing computer work was about 5 years ago in a school district. I took a little career detour unfortunately and I've realized it was a mistake and i need to get back into the field as i am much more passionate about it than what i'm doing now. I'm reaching out to those that are in the field now and hope they might be able to give me some pointers or resources i can go threw and see what really has changed as far as the technology goes in the last 5 years or so. I have to admit all these new processors it seems quite confusing now days to really get a grasp on there "speed" since obviously its not all about the clock rate any more. And Windows 8, oh i don't even want to think about it. I haven't hardly touched it but from what i have it seems like a whole other ball game. I've spent the last few years with my head buried in linux lol.. Honestly i'm not quite sure what all could be that different now days but thats the problem, i honestly just don't know. Any light on this would be greatly appreciated!

Thank You!

vinnypolston

Hey it's good you're getting back into IT! If I were in your shoes, with having spent the last few years with your head buried in Linux, I'd go deeper into that. I did a search on RobertHalf and there are about 500 job postings for Linux administrators

OctalDump

The last 5 years, eh? Well the big changes are virtualisation, the cloud, and BYOD.

Processors have become more horizontal (more cores) than vertical (clock speed). This is part of what is driving virtualisation, since if you have effectively 16+ processors in one box, then you can happily run multiple operating systems side by side, giving each 1 or 2 (or more) cores as needed. For virtualisation, VMWare is the big commercial player, Hyper-V is MS's offering, and Linux has a few. KVM is being pushed by RedHat, whereas Xen seems popular everywhere else. Citrix provides the Xen based Xenserver. The bleeding edge is with containerised virtualisation like Docker. MS, RedHat and VMware all offer certification programs.

Cloud is also big, since internet speeds are increasing, mobility has increased, virtualisation is easier, and large scales bring a lot of benefits. AWS and Azure are the places to start. There are free and low cost ways to get your hands on these technologies to start playing with. Cloud+ is a reasonable place to start to give an overview, although it likely won't get you a job by itself - AWS certifications are the best bet there.

And mobility and smart phones and tablets has driven BYOD. This sort of has to be taken all together. Smart phones and tablets gave people the possibility of meaningful mobile work, like checking emails, browsing the net and then later things like editing documents. This functionality meant people started using them for work purposes, but still wanted to own and control their own devices. Usually this was top down as well, with execs bringing in new "toys" and insisting that in house IT accommodate them. It's spread everywhere and become a challenge to deal with. MDM is the buzzword here - mobile device management.

Security also deserves a mention in that it is increasingly becoming serious business. Info Sec has developed a number of sub specialisations - penetration testing, audit, assurance, incident handling, forensics, governance - and also risen to C level, Chief Information Security Officer, Chief Privacy Officer, Chief Security Officer. Security+ is a good starting place, and recommended for all IT workers.