IT Desktop Support to be Wiped Out!

the_Grinch

IT Desktop Support To Be Wiped Out Thanks To Cloud Computing

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N2IT

I've read a bunch of articles discussing this. I tend to believe it to be true. Like TV repair men, desktop and laptop repair will eventually be phased out.

RomBUS

Well we've all couldve seen this happening as this "cloud" stuff started coming about...less physical repair was invevitable. I mean honestly I hardly ever anticipate physically repairing a PC/laptop anymore.

bugzy3188

I knew the cloud was up to no good. On one hand it is taking away some of the older positions, but on the other hand, who knows what new positions could become available on account of the cloud. That's kind of the name of the game with IT no?

veritas_libertas

I take this kind of stuff with a grain of salt. We were all told once our users moved to iPhones we wouldn't have to support them. That quickly changed when the Help Desk couldn't walk users through certain steps. Lost time is lost money for our company. Flexible software/hardware means that it will have some complications in how it's implemented and used. As long as there are employees who can break things, and hide icons Desktop Support personnel will be needed.

the_Grinch

I guess on one hand I can see it happening, but what I think will actually happen will be slightly different. You're still going to need a set of "smart" hands. Ultimately we are probably looking at dumb terminals with no moving parts that will at some point die. Obviously, the end user will be oblivious to this and it will require someone coming in with another dumb terminal and hooking it up. Boot and bam they are back doing what they were doing. This assumes that there is desktop virtualization and web based applications. I often use to think that on the graphics end you will still need a full desktop, but here we have a final cut server. Graphics guys login to a website and the server performs all the heavy lifting.

RobertKaucher

bugzy3188 wrote: »

On one hand it is taking away some of the older positions, but on the other hand, who knows what new positions could become available on account of the cloud.

A few months ago we discussed the potential impact of these types of services on the IT industry pretty consistently. I think your point about staying current is always important to IT and a lot pf people expressed that view.

But I think there is a side to this that people don't appreciated enough and that is that these technologies are designed to do ultimately one thing: save companies money by eliminating overhead and this includes humans and their salaries and benefits.

It is a contradiction that a technology designed to put people out of jobs will, in someway, create jobs unless it creates a larger more expansive industry. If you look at the way the auto industry replaced the industry that surrounded the buggy this is completely different. The auto industry created a ton of new jobs. But what happened when robotic systems began to infiltrate the auto industry? Those jobs were not replaced within the industry. Workers did not change from making cars to making robots who made cars. Other things opened up as our economy expanded due to other emerging technologies but auto manufacturing has NEVER been the same since - at least not from the employee perspective.

All of us need to get ahead of this curve. What we are seeing here is a change over the next decade that is going to, IMO, more radical than the move from green screens to the modern UI. I think it is going to be even larger than the explosion of the Internet in the early 2000s.

paulgswanson

I don't really believe Cloud_computing will EVER phase Desktop-Support out. Your internet goes out you lose access to everything. Simple as that its a single point of failure isn't it? Isn't that generally a bad thing? And a BAD idea?

veritas_libertas

RobertKaucher wrote: »

All of us need to get ahead of this curve. What we are seeing here is a change over the next decade that is going to, IMO, more radical than the move from green screens to the modern UI. I think it is going to be even larger than the explosion of the Internet in the early 2000s.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. It's interesting to see the shift from using desktops to laptops, from laptops to smart phones, now the abundance of touch tablets. I would imagine that the majority of individuals that post here don't use POP3 or IMAP clients on their computers. The move towards use of web applications will affect all of us that work in IT.

@The_Grinch: I agree with what you are saying for the most part. I don't think Desktop Support will be completely gone, just reduced in size.

the_Grinch

Well, with the increased capital from not having "desktop" guys, you in turn can get redundancy. At one company I worked for we had Comcast for all internet and then T1's for phones and business critical apps. At any point if we lost the T1's or Comcast, we could switch everything through the other. Only thing that would take us down would be a power outage and we had generators for that eventuality. So I will side with you'll have some smart hands, but other then just replacing cheap broken equipment there probably isn't much they'll be doing.

N2IT

Agreed Veritas

RobertKaucher

paulgswanson wrote: »

I don't really believe Cloud_computing will EVER phase Desktop-Support out. Your internet goes out you lose access to everything. Simple as that its a single point of failure isn't it? Isn't that generally a bad thing? And a BAD idea?

But the majority of support people do not work for ISPs. Do you want to work in a role where all you do is read from a script and ask the user to unplug and plug their modem back in?

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. It's interesting to see the shift from using desktops to laptops, from laptops to smart phones, now the abundance of touch tablets. I would imagine that the majority of individuals that post here don't use POP3 or IMAP clients on their computers. The move towards use of web applications will affect all of us that work in IT.

Web applications and services that allow a single admin to deal with many hundreds of systems easily are the types of disruptive technologies I am talking about. Support roles will never fully disappear but I really believe that in 8 years we will see very low-level support roles being decimated via a combination of better out-sourcing and software-based automation and software-based productivity increases. I am currently on the fence about networking jobs. I think in the midterm they are going to grow but in 20 years will be effected by the same forces as software eats the world.

paulgswanson

@RobertKaucher Of Course I don't want to read from scripts. What I do hope for though is that this Cloud fad falls on its face and dissapears. Theres only a few companies that can really make Cloud successful. Example:
Google = Win
Amazon = Win
Graphics Rendering Farm= Win
Microsoft = Fail Office 36(4)

In regards to microsoft thats exactly why I think and hope that Cloud is just a fad. Do you really want to lose access to all your apps if a server crashes?

I actually read an article today to really outlines why i don't see it taking off.
Researcher: Interdependencies could lead to cloud 'meltdowns'

shodown

Somebody has to man the cloud. It doesn't' just work.

veritas_libertas

shodown wrote: »

Somebody has to man the cloud. It doesn't' just work.

In that case: Terminators/Skynet = Fail ????

Bummer. I was really hoping to be part of The Resistance

alxx

users still need help regardless of cloud or desktop or mainframe.

The more a company outsources or puts it in the cloud the less control of their information security and infrastructure they have.

Psoasman

Well, until the cloud can plug a surge protector back in or punch down a network cable in the middle of a concert, my job is safe.

higherho

I dont understand some buisnesses. Lately we've been seeing some major attacks / breaches going on with credit card companies, government, etc and we still have people think that the "Cloud" is a great security solution? Centrailized computing is not a bad idea but I think it makes the attackers job much easier.

I do think the cloud can help small and medium size businesses out a lot because some of those companies just cannot afford to have their own IT staff / IT backend. But in the essence of security? I would't trust google, Microsoft, or apple with my information. Just look at how many people are complaining about handing PII over on Facebook.

steve_f

I spent a few years in Desktop Support. Typically, laptop hardware repair would be done on warranty by a Dell\HP\whoever engineer. Same for printers.

They said software deployment and improved build management would kill Desktop Support. It didn't.

New things are coming in for the desktop team to support every day. There is smart meeting room management software, increased complexity in the AV technology running in meeting rooms. We have a new secure video conference system, that despite being simple to use, the execs demand a desktop person is present 15 monutes on both sides whenever there is a secure VC.
The desktop team are diversifying to support these new things, and it's a lot more fun than manually installing Office

They are also managing and supporting a bunch of tablets, smartphones. Technology is getting smarter, but the users sure aren't!!!!

jibbajabba

I certainly wouldn't mind if some of our Desktop Support is wiped out

But hang on - Desktop Support ? Surely people at the other end of the cloud - the earth part - need a hand every now and then, unless end user can just look at the sky and work (would love that) with the need of any physical kit ..

tpatt100

I saw this coming with thin clients years ago and it did have an impact. When I was on the help desk and software installs were made into msi files for us to deploy with SMS for installs, reinstalls, uninstalls the number of desktop support requests dropped.

Losing access to the cloud? I installed Google Gears in Chrome when I started using Google Docs so I could work offline if needed.

edit: interesting Gears is dead now lol HTML5 instead, guess I need to pay more attention

RobertKaucher

steve_f wrote: »

I spent a few years in Desktop Support. Typically, laptop hardware repair would be done on warranty by a Dell\HP\whoever engineer. Same for printers.

They said software deployment and improved build management would kill Desktop Support. It didn't.

New things are coming in for the desktop team to support every day. There is smart meeting room management software, increased complexity in the AV technology running in meeting rooms. We have a new secure video conference system, that despite being simple to use, the execs demand a desktop person is present 15 monutes on both sides whenever there is a secure VC.
The desktop team are diversifying to support these new things, and it's a lot more fun than manually installing Office

They are also managing and supporting a bunch of tablets, smartphones. Technology is getting smarter, but the users sure aren't!!!!

So here is a fundamental misunderstanding of what is actually being said here. I don't believe that anyone is suggesting that there will literally be no more desktop support techs over the next decade or so. What is being said is that with a move to centralized, cloud-based applications (web based apps) and other technologies fewer and fewer support techs are going to be able to do much more. This means the support staff can be more easily outsourced and for those who are on-site even fewer will be needed as technologies used in business becomes more and more comoditized to the point where nothing is ever repaired, only replaced. Meaning the current number of users supported by a staff of 10 could be handled by 3 people with no perceived drop in quality of service.

The move to this sort of time and money saving infrastructure is going to push ISPs to a new model. Businesses and customers are going to demand ubiquitous, fast connections to the Internet. With the advent of technologies like 802.11 ac we are going to see an explosion of faster, longer ranged WiFi that may have very positive changes for how and where we can get connected.

pumbaa_g

I started out in a Service Desk a long time back for a major IT Player and I would like to add a few things to this discussion
1. The Technology to reduce IT Desk Volumes already exists however, companies are slow to adopt unless they want to reduce headcount badly
2. Efficiency is the byword in any Service Desk or any IT Industry for that matter. If you resolve 20 calls a day and Customer Sat of 80% & Solved Rate of 80% next year the Quarter the target will be 50 calls and so on till you will need to give up on one to get another.
Thats how the business is run, we cant escape that eventuality. Why whine about the Cloud when 30-40% of call volumes for IT Service Desk are password reset related? MS Forefront was launched in 2010, imagine how many System Admins and IT Desk people have been downsized because of that
The only way out is getting upskilled and getting out or growing internally, either way the cycle continues

jibbajabba

phoeneous wrote: »

I hear it's ran by cats that look like hitler while eating a cheezburger..

He was vegetarian

Roguetadhg

Ill be happy when the majority of the "It doesn't work" calls get filtered out with a quick fix. Rebooting.

It's not going to go away 100% anytime soon.