The Future of hot IT Jobs?

Hey guys I wonder if we can talk about the future of IT jobs in this thread I am making. What I mean is yeah I think we all can agree on basic areas of IT, but on the forum we have so many people in so many areas of IT maybe we can each describe our jobs to help others decide what areas that are out there and that we can all agree are going to be hot in the future.

Starting with me:

I work at a credit union as an Assistant network admin.
I do help desk, PC repair, PC building, etc.., I do server repair, some network diagnosis (but we vendor out our network engineering: voip, and T1 line setup, and internal LAN/WAN). It sucks. It has been that way before I came on the scene and trust me it will be the same when I leave if you know what I mean. Okay. I can do software and domain troubleshooting. I manage our Exchange 2003 server. I work with AD/GPO domain wide. I have implemented SPAM filter system/software MailMarshal, I take care of corporate wide Antivirus deployment, I take care or user-end voip issues and some server room voip diagnosis and repair. I help manage our voip phones using mitel systems. We do have cisco backbone networking equipment but run a mitel voip system. I have design many software programs that aid in network admin duties. If there is no software tool, I just make it in vb.net or kixtart script language or I use perl. whatever works for the application I make it to work. I am allowed to make many programs that save us ours of time. This allowance to make these programs has increased my programming skills 10 fold. I help manage our online banking servers and voice banking servers. I also do bank data processing with our financial management software. Eventually I would like to get into exclusive network and server work and get away from any bank data processing and work strictily with network engineering stuff but I am not sure what areas I would like. I really like system admin because you can do many things.
But in order for me to maybe make better money, I might need to specialize in voip? or firewalls, that is why I started this thread maybe we can all shed light on maybe what we do and what is out there and what all of us thinK is in the future. I think these are going to be hot:

anything security
sql admin/database
voip/data/video
CISSP cert for sure
CSO emergence (or has this been around already?)
checkpoint firewall

(cisco asa is on the fritz with its non user friend ASDM it seems)
I called a cisco rep the other day and left a message and wanted to give them some ideas on why checkpoint is better and the cisco rep never called me back; that pisses me off since I was willing to give them some ideas and they dont even care to call me back nice!)

but what else and maybe what specific areas do you guys see as being hot
and maybe what certs do you all think are going to be hot??

Thanks, let's get this party started!

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Comments

pennystrader

Well I am also a server administrator and I think some of the things that are currently big will stay big in the future. Exchange- mail in general is enterprise critical, virtualization, storage specialization and also cloud computing. My VMware skills and Exchange skills have allowed me to move around and try different jobs and always get asked about and employers love it that I have skills that are critical to about any infrastructure. That being said I say get any of the following certification to help you career path.

VCP
MCITP: Exchange 2007 and/or 2010

itdaddy

penny

I like the WMware catalyst idea that accelerates your moving around to many applications. Great idea. super super input! This is going to be a great thread.

veritas_libertas

I think that Health Care is going to keep growing here in the US. I am going to be keeping my eyes open for IT jobs in that sector...

TechJunky

Healthcare Database Administrator. You can pretty much write your ticket to any hospital starting around 85k with a year or two of experience. With more you could make 100k easy.

Project Managers make good money. If you have a chance to get your PMP certification you will make 100k easy pretty much anywhere. I know this for a fact as I used to work for a large government contracting company and none of the PMP's made less than 100k if they were working on government contracts.

cablegod

itdaddy wrote: »

(cisco asa is on the fritz with its non user friend ASDM it seems)
I called a cisco rep the other day and left a message and wanted to give them some ideas on why checkpoint is better and the cisco rep never called me back; that pisses me off since I was willing to give them some ideas and they dont even care to call me back nice!)

And you wonder why he won't call you back eh? Haha, I sure wouldn't either.

thenjduke

I work in healthcare. I work on our Cisco Side and Windows Side. One big thing that we are working on is VMWare. We are starting to virtualize most of our servers and now in the talks about setting VDI for desktops. I have been the lead on both projects which has given me nice expierence in VMWare. I plan for this to be my next certification after Cisco. I barely touch Exchange or AD anymore but more on the project side of things and working with Network side of things. I would agree healthcare is a big move going on in the USA right now and it is good I am learning these systems. Allscripts EHR and Misys are two huge players in the healthcare system. Learn these and you will be greeted with open arms.

GWadejr34

I just love Techexams...It's like eveything I'm thinking about is answered before I can ask the question...This place is the best I swear...

That being said...as afar as the healthcare field is concerned, do you need to know medical terminology or anything close to it. I was planning on making sure that I'm well rounded and marketable in regards to different areas of IT - with healthcare being #1 on my list.

Turgon

itdaddy wrote: »

Hey guys I wonder if we can talk about the future of IT jobs in this thread I am making. What I mean is yeah I think we all can agree on basic areas of IT, but on the forum we have so many people in so many areas of IT maybe we can each describe our jobs to help others decide what areas that are out there and that we can all agree are going to be hot in the future.

Starting with me:
I work at a credit union as an Assistant network admin.
I do help desk, PC repair, PC building, etc.., I do server repair, some network diagnosis (but we vendor out our network engineering: voip, and T1 line setup, and internal LAN/WAN). It sucks. It has been that way before I came on the scene and trust me it will be the same when I leave if you know what I mean. Okay. I can do software and domain troubleshooting. I manage our Exchange 2003 server. I work with AD/GPO domain wide. I have implemented SPAM filter system/software MailMarshal, I take care of corporate wide Antivirus deployment, I take care or user-end voip issues and some server room voip diagnosis and repair. I help manage our voip phones using mitel systems. We do have cisco backbone networking equipment but run a mitel voip system. I have design many software programs that aid in network admin duties. If there is no software tool, I just make it in vb.net or kixtart script language or I use perl. whatever works for the application I make it to work. I am allowed to make many programs that save us ours of time. This allowance to make these programs has increased my programming skills 10 fold. I help manage our online banking servers and voice banking servers. I also do bank data processing with our financial management software. Eventually I would like to get into exclusive network and server work and get away from any bank data processing and work strictily with network engineering stuff but I am not sure what areas I would like. I really like system admin because you can do many things.
But in order for me to maybe make better money, I might need to specialize in voip? or firewalls, that is why I started this thread maybe we can all shed light on maybe what we do and what is out there and what all of us thinK is in the future. I think these are going to be hot:

anything security
sql admin/database
voip/data/video
CISSP cert for sure
CSO emergence (or has this been around already?)
checkpoint firewall

(cisco asa is on the fritz with its non user friend ASDM it seems)
I called a cisco rep the other day and left a message and wanted to give them some ideas on why checkpoint is better and the cisco rep never called me back; that pisses me off since I was willing to give them some ideas and they dont even care to call me back nice!)

but what else and maybe what specific areas do you guys see as being hot
and maybe what certs do you all think are going to be hot??

Thanks, let's get this party started!

For employment generally military industrial complex, banking, healthcare should offer hires. Also cloud providers.

In terms of prospects getting involved in projects that reduce costs by shrinking the infrastructure footprint or moving infrastructure and services into clouds or countries where costs are cheaper would help your CV. Steady state support environments offer experience but will change dramatically over the next 5 years..i.e disappear in many cases.

itdaddy

Cable God,

I told the cisco rep I was a CCNA and I wanted to get my CCSP and that I have been seeing a shift in people moving to checkpoint.
IMHO checkpoint is beating out ASA and its ASDM etc..I told him I loved the ASA command line but many people don't like that and if you want to be great you need to listen to those who have good ideas and can see a shift. I even told him I was on Cisco's side....If a company is not willing to listen to its Cisco Certified techs and engineers who will it listen to? That is the problem with a lot of companies today and people they don't listen and who feeds them? Their customers...

I wasn't like Cisco ASA sucks let me tell you about it! kind of words hahha
I was very cool but like I said it shows you why they are being beat out.

Turgon

itdaddy wrote: »

Cable God,

I told the cisco rep I was a CCNA and I wanted to get my CCSP and that I have been seeing a shift in people moving to checkpoint.
IMHO checkpoint is beating out ASA and its ASDM etc..I told him I loved the ASA command line but many people don't like that and if you want to be great you need to listen to those who have good ideas and can see a shift. I even told him I was on Cisco's side....If a company is not willing to listen to its Cisco Certified techs and engineers who will it listen to? That is the problem with a lot of companies today and people they don't listen and who feeds them? Their customers...

I wasn't like Cisco ASA sucks let me tell you about it! kind of words hahha
I was very cool but like I said it shows you why they are being beat out.

The ASA command line is great but once your configurations become heavy with objects and NAT rules and VPNs and everything else you are much less likely to screw up with a GUI, dropping to command line when necessary. This is one of checkpoint's strengths and has been for many years. I have been working with CP since 4.1 back in the year 2000. Historically Checkpoint has prospered in enterprise enviroments and medium sized companies. Interestingly a lot of US government shops prefer ASA/PIX over CP. I heard this was primarily down to CP being a foreign product as opposed to a US one and inhouse security policy concerns about using overseas technology.

Hyper-Me

The whole cloud thing is iffy at this point.

While im sure it will be a godsend for certain SMBs and some medium businesses. I can't see huge enterprises or certain industries (Medical, legal) using cloud services due to legal issues (HIPAA) or just downright sensitive info.

So, while there are cool cloud services that make existing things easy (Google apps for your domain, with Gmail and Googlesync). There are companies who dont want or cant have Google indexing their mail at whim and doing what they want with that information. Until companies can build solid products that work in house and out house (giggle) then there will be a strong demand for IT Pros being on staff.

You also have "booming" areas like Virtualization, the move to EMR's in the medical field, etc.

I think the world is too intertwined in technology to just say "oh we arent going to use it anymore". The key is to be good at the particular technologies that are in demand at any given time.

itdaddy

Turgon

Historically Checkpoint has prospered in enterprise enviroments and medium sized companies. Interestingly a lot of US government shops prefer ASA/PIX over CP. I heard this was primarily down to CP being a foreign product as opposed to a US one and inhouse security policy concerns about using overseas technology.

Aren't cisco products made in china and mexico? hee hee I think they are but
maybe the US company makes a difference even though someone could tweak a chip config while overseas being manufactured?

veritas_libertas

itdaddy wrote: »

Turgon

Aren't cisco products made in china and mexico? hee hee I think they are but
maybe the US company makes a difference even though someone could tweak a chip config while overseas being manufactured?

That has already happened:

FBI worried as DoD sold counterfeit Cisco gear | Security Central - InfoWorld

Slashdot Technology Story | Chinese Man Gets 30 Months For Fake Cisco Sales

Turgon

Hyper-Me wrote: »

The whole cloud thing is iffy at this point.

While im sure it will be a godsend for certain SMBs and some medium businesses. I can't see huge enterprises or certain industries (Medical, legal) using cloud services due to legal issues (HIPAA) or just downright sensitive info.

So, while there are cool cloud services that make existing things easy (Google apps for your domain, with Gmail and Googlesync). There are companies who dont want or cant have Google indexing their mail at whim and doing what they want with that information. Until companies can build solid products that work in house and out house (giggle) then there will be a strong demand for IT Pros being on staff.

You also have "booming" areas like Virtualization, the move to EMR's in the medical field, etc.

I think the world is too intertwined in technology to just say "oh we arent going to use it anymore". The key is to be good at the particular technologies that are in demand at any given time.

Yes some good points. I still think we will see growth in cloud job opportunities though. Even if it isn't the right option for companies at the moment due to one legal or technical reason, many executives are going to push for it and they will take a lot of convincing not to go for it if it is possible. The potential savings are just too alluring even if they are mythical

UnixGuy

I see a lot of potential in the storage area : SANs, NAS, backups..etc.

The size of data is getting bigger; so is the need for Disaster recovery, backups, and consolidated storage networks.

itdaddy

veritas

holy balloons! They have to figure out how to lock these devices down.
so many hands and such a big company...

if i were USA or any government you just cant trust that many people anymore it sucks!

thanks for the info

Veritas, read below you have to love this....but I understand what he is saying
but what a shame...really...econ before security I guess a ship that is eventually going to sink is better than no ship at all huh?

Security researcher King believes that the government is better off focusing on detection rather than trying to secure the IT supply chain, because there are strong economic incentives to keep it open and flexible -- even if this means there may be security problems. "There are so many good reasons for this global supply chain; I just think there's no way we can secure it."

thenjduke

GWadejr34 wrote: »

I just love Techexams...It's like eveything I'm thinking about is answered before I can ask the question...This place is the best I swear...

That being said...as afar as the healthcare field is concerned, do you need to know medical terminology or anything close to it. I was planning on making sure that I'm well rounded and marketable in regards to different areas of IT - with healthcare being #1 on my list.

I have only been in healthcare for the last three years. I did not know the terminology before going in. I still barely know it but my manager is good with it. I am picking it up little by little.

moonlight08

While I think VMWare is still booming as one previous poster mentioned, I don't see it lasting long-term. More and more whenever you talk seriously about virtualization, it isn't necessarily that you have to make VMware the top priority, but rather storage is the top priority. On top of that, storage is essential for all data so I suspect the storage aspect of IT will continue to grow.

Once a lot of businesses become virtualized, than it's pretty much a done deal. VMware makes their sale, but it isn't like the same business needs to buy a second piece of VMware; they just expand their licensing and adjust accordingly. VMware at that point makes money off of license fees and any upgrades. Their recent upgrade to vsphere 4 is impressive in terms of added features but I've noticed they haven't really touched the "core" of the product much. At some point, all of that is going to start leveling off - number of new businesses buying into the product and number of existing businesses electing to not upgrade to the new version right away.

As for the whole cloud concept, yeah small businesses will probably get the most out of it but I think once people more and more begin to realize they don't like putting everything out in the cloud (ie: their security concerns/paranoia start to creep in more) than it may level off.

historian1974

On the business side of things, ITIL is a hot one. Asset management looks like it is gaining momentum as well.

Turgon

itdaddy wrote: »

Turgon

Aren't cisco products made in china and mexico? hee hee I think they are but
maybe the US company makes a difference even though someone could tweak a chip config while overseas being manufactured?

I have a 4000 series with made in USA boards but it's all far east production now.

Checkpoint hails from Isreal I understand.

watson09

I am even expecting a boom in IT jobs as it was years before. If that happens i will be sure to get marvelous growth. Just keeping my fingers crossed