Which IT field heating up the most?

Just curious as to what direction you guys/gals see things going. I know VoIP is finally warming up, and security of course is hot, but what other branches of IT do you see getting big in the next few years?

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az_golfer

Linux will keep growing.

jryantech

az_golfer wrote:

Linux will keep growing.

Wait till we see commercials with a white screen and three guys... "Hi I'm a Mac" "And I'm a PC" "Yo I'm Linux and I'm more hip then Mac AND PC"

Nah, never mind

eMeS

My thoughts:

1 - Anything that helps abstract existing technology investments into web services.

2 - Virtualization. I know of one large (blue chip) company who has a 2 year goal of becoming a strong competitor in this space.

3 - Entertainment, primarily online gaming.

4 - Energy, e.g., complex modeling systems used to predict the presence of resources (in the old days, this work was done on Crays)

I think the list could go on forever....

Silentsoul

I think Voice is going to be hot for a while, the problem is getting use to the equipment your not using every day. Avaya, Cisco, SIlverlake, Nortel.

Security is ALWAYS going to be hot, the thing is, its a constant challenge, the bad guys are always working so its up to you to stay a head. This is where I will be doing most of my work as I love a challenge and there is always something new to do, plus I love the shady side of it, you gotta understand the exploits in order to fix them.

As far as Linux is concerned I think that the server market is going to continue to utilize linux, I think they grabbed another few percentages of the market share last year. It truly is an amazing operating system, I just recently went to completely nix on the desktop, but I still have a windows server because that is what I will be working with in the industry mostly.

HeroPsycho

Virtualization

Centralized Storage

Anything revolving around compliancy around HIPAA, SEC, SOX - message archiving, whole disk encryption

cdad2000

I think Storage!

dynamik

Virtualization and voice.

astorrs

Here's my picks for the next 18 months:

Hardware Virtualization (VMware VI3, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer)
Application Virtualization (Microsoft App-V - formerly SoftGrid, VMware ThinApp - formerly Thinstall)
Presentation Virtualization (including VDI and SBC)
OS Virtualization (Parallels Virtuozzo)
Storage Virtualization (Hitachi Data Systems is my fave here)

Hmm, there's a theme there... Virtualization (and the associated consolidations of data center space/locations) is my #1.

I see VOIP (and Unified Messaging) continuing to grow at a rapid rate, particularlyy for Cisco whose ISR routers and the insane pricing discounts if you buy the voice SKUs, half the time they are cheaper than the ones without for large companies! (I'm thinking Cisco Gold and such must have heavier discounts on those - excellent marketing strategy by the way, very Microsoft). This will also have the added benefit of pushing the adoption of fully meshed converged networking (e.g., MPLS) into more companies in the US - where Frame Relay is still the king, as royal would say "what's frame relay?".

Security and compliance will be on every companies list, quality of implementation will vary dramatically.

I'd love to see WAN Optimization embraced by more and more companies (especially Wide Area File Services - WAFS), but I don't think enough of them "get it" yet.

And finally the whole "Green IT" thing. Companies are looking here especially in data centers since they get both a reduction in energy use (and therefore save money in the long run), and (almost more importantly) they get another reason to append "Green" to everything they do - I hate the fact this became a marketing thing, but what doesn't...

Since infrastructure is my area, I'll stick to it and leave it to others to bring up SOA, BPM, etc.

scheistermeister

My guesses would be on:

1. Virtualization
2. Security
3. VoIP

In that order. I really would love to learn more about virtualization, but don't really have the resources to. I do love VMWare Workstation though. Have it in both windows and linux and use it on both.

dynamik

The only reason I didn't say security is because I think it's already HOT

jryantech

So all this talk about Virtualization and their is 55 topics in it's forum? Let get chattin'

UnixGuy

Virtualization and Storages.

Daniel333

Virtualization, storage and voip have been in for the past few years and well certainly continue. The NEXT big thing? I am going to say the abacus is making a come back.

Seriously, I think the next big move, application presentation, remote storage for the home PC/terminal provided by the ISP. We'll see the end of the OS as we know it, and of course that will all be integrated into your video phone/TV.

Movies, music, microsoft word and storage are just services provided by your ISP.

So the next field is going to be content legality and producing with ISPs. And of course, relaying our broadband lines.

eMeS

astorrs wrote:

Since infrastructure is my area, I'll stick to it and leave it to others to bring up SOA, BPM, etc.

When I listed "abstraction" I mean SOA, BPM, etc....all of the things that intend to make IT make more sense to the business, more reusable, etc.....There's so much going on in that space that I like to add my own abstraction and simply refer to all of it as "abstraction". IMO these things are very much a slice of the same pie.

I see BizTalk server getting bigger for this very reason in the coming years.

I agree completely about virtualization. What I am hearing is going to be really big is capturing the market for charge-back, monitoring, operations, etc... on all of these virtual images of things out there.

Around 10 years ago I was involved in an implementation of what was called "Unix Systems Services" in a large mainframe environment. Basically it was multiple virtual POSIX compliant Unix images running under a host os/390. The biggest challenges that we had at the time were 1) charge-back (on mainframes this is typically based on cpu-seconds), 2) monitoring and operations, and 3) cross-platform automation.

My understanding is that a lot has changed since then, however, out of all of the great virtualization products out there no one company has yet produced a definitive solution to these three challenges. I look for virtualization to become very focused on solving these problems.

MS

Sie

+1 for Virtualization.

Companies are always looking at how to consolidate resources and systems and with the latest advancements in Virtualization technologies I see a lot more taking up this path.

I’m also hoping Security stays up there, you'll know why I mean if you saw my other post

Turgon

Not the MS file and print or any MS variants so far as job listings go.

Virtualization, Voice, SAN, Security, MPLS, UNIX, Linux variants. Load balancing and content networking, proxies etc, remote access. Integration and architect roles. Wide range of skills looked for in network professionals. One opening in banking calls for:

Call Manager 5.1 and above
Cisco Works 2.6
HP Network Node Manager v 7.5
F5 load balancers
Checkpoint Nokia
Juniper SSL VPNs SA3000
PIX
All routing and switching skills.

I have an NNM eval. May be time to invest some time in the tools.

Support roles are overrun now with a plethora of platforms and versions to deal with. One of the biggest problems for a few years now is the lack of value companies place on investment in support professionals. You are lucky if you get any training these days to keep up. Add to which consultants and senior managers are sold on the idea that web enabled techologies must be helping reduce complexity and keep costs down. In other words in the eyes of key decision makers your role should be becoming easier and simpler not harder these days. Hence the offshoring push.

Good roles in the senior designer/architect space remain but in support itself salaries remain squashed, the number of roles are diminishing and the work itself is increasingly hassled and undervalued.

Look to support to get your feet wet and move into the design space if you can.

nice343

voice

darkerosxx

I haven't seen much mentioned about wireless. The top ISP's are investing very heavily in providing widespread wireless access to their customers. Wireless networking and administration of access points has, is, and will be "heating up."

astorrs

eMeS wrote:

...out of all of the great virtualization products out there no one company has yet produced a definitive solution to these three challenges. I look for virtualization to become very focused on solving these problems.

There are some excellent 3rd party solutions that are starting to address these 3 areas, I would expect the big players in those markets to start making acquisitions in those spaces over the next few years.

JDMurray

There is a very strong push now to have customers lease software rather than buy it, so Application Service Providers and Software as a Service is making a major come-back.

eMeS wrote:

3 - Entertainment, primarily online gaming.

The major venture capitol money for this came and gone in 2005-2007. It's a very competitive market (a person can only spend so many hours per week playing games) and difficult to maintain stable revenues. Sony is $3BillionUSD in the hole for the PS3. Blizzard, Vivendi, and NCSoft are doing well, but many other game shops have closed down or were fire-saled in the past 18 months.

eMeS

I read something recently that indicated that Blizzard is generating the equivalent of "1 Ironman per month" in terms of revenue.

Hard for me to believe that with that kind of money on the table, and the target demographic growing, that there won't be intense competition for those dollars in the coming years.

I also read something recently from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicting a 10% annual growth in the gaming industry from 2008-2012.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6192719.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6192719

I know you've (JD) worked in this specific field and I haven't, so you likely know more about it from an insider perspective. It's just hard for me to believe that an industry growing at that clip that is IT intensive won't be hiring a lot of strong technicians in the years to come.

MS

Nuwin

I think electronic content management will continue to grow for years to come. The industry space is beyond simply scanning paper and retrieving them from the network.

Players in the ECM Space (FileNet, Documentum, OnBase, etc.) recognize this and have built complex solutions that emulate/automate paper processes in the work place, increasing efficiencies and reducing paper storage costs. And that is only one piece of the equation.

Managing already electronic documents are a challenge, with these players providing tools to manage that as well.

Of course, that could just be me because I'm in the industry and it has enabled my career to take off. Of course, I work both in ECM but in the ASP model which I see growth in both...

astorrs

Nuwin wrote:

I think electronic content management will continue to grow for years to come. The industry space is beyond simply scanning paper and retrieving them from the network.

Players in the ECM Space (FileNet, Documentum, OnBase, etc.) recognize this and have built complex solutions that emulate/automate paper processes in the work place, increasing efficiencies and reducing paper storage costs. And that is only one piece of the equation.

Managing already electronic documents are a challenge, with these players providing tools to manage that as well.

Of course, that could just be me because I'm in the industry and it has enabled my career to take off. Of course, I work both in ECM but in the ASP model which I see growth in both...

Good one. OnBase is a huge part of my principal clients strategy and is moving into almost every part of their business processes.

JDMurray

eMeS wrote:

I know you've (JD) worked in this specific field and I haven't, so you likely know more about it from an insider perspective. It's just hard for me to believe that an industry growing at that clip that is IT intensive won't be hiring a lot of strong technicians in the years to come.

The IT departments of gaming companies are typically very small. IT really eats into the profits, so gaming companies prefer to outsource as much of IT to hosting services as possible. For MMORPGs, grid computing and virtualization is where IT is at.

eMeS

JDMurray wrote:

eMeS wrote:

I know you've (JD) worked in this specific field and I haven't, so you likely know more about it from an insider perspective. It's just hard for me to believe that an industry growing at that clip that is IT intensive won't be hiring a lot of strong technicians in the years to come.

The IT departments of gaming companies are typically very small. IT really eats into the profits, so gaming companies prefer to outsource as much of IT to hosting services as possible. For MMORPGs, grid computing and virtualization is where IT is at.

Interesting. Thanks!

MS

astorrs

JDMurray wrote:

Why waste salaries on techs when you can hire more developers...

...and artists. Gaming companies drive their developers very hard, but the artists are worked even harder. The theory is that there is always two more contract artists waiting to fill a position vacated by a burned-out artist. It's not unusual for a large gaming company to hire a new, replacement artist every three weeks. The volume of high-quality material the artists are expected produce in a short amount of time borders on the unreasonable.

lildeezul

These are my opinions..

1) Wireless
2) Secuirty
3)voice

astorrs

astorrs wrote:

JDMurray wrote:

Why waste salaries on techs when you can hire more developers...

...and artists. Gaming companies drive their developers very hard, but the artists are worked even harder. The theory is that there is always two more contract artists waiting to fill a position vacated by a burned-out artist. It's not unusual for a large gaming company to hire a new, replacement artist every three weeks. The volume of high-quality material the artists are expected produce in a short amount of time borders on the unreasonable.

Now my name is associated with stuff I don't even remember writing...

JDMurray

astorrs wrote:

astorrs wrote:

JDMurray wrote:

Why waste salaries on techs when you can hire more developers...

...and artists. Gaming companies drive their developers very hard, but the artists are worked even harder. The theory is that there is always two more contract artists waiting to fill a position vacated by a burned-out artist. It's not unusual for a large gaming company to hire a new, replacement artist every three weeks. The volume of high-quality material the artists are expected produce in a short amount of time borders on the unreasonable.

Now my name is associated with stuff I don't even remember writing...

My fault.

By mistake I hit the Edit button instead of the Quote button. They both display the same page, so it's not easy to catch the mistake by visual appearance alone. Lemme see if I can fix it.