What is the Future? The Cloud? Or Something Else?

I'm getting back into certs. I don't want to study for what is good now but for what will be like a rocket in 2 years' time.

I'm thinking of the Microsoft cloud track.

Am I right or wrong, what do you think? What do you think will be huge?

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Comments

darkerosxx

The future of what, exactly? Just the IT field in general, or a specific subset?

stryder144

While I don't think there is an accurate crystal ball out there, I don't think you can go wrong with an MS cloud-type cert. MS will still be dominant for the foreseeable future and cloud is the lates/greatest buzzword.

europop

darkerosxx wrote: »

The future of what, exactly? Just the IT field in general, or a specific subset?

I mean an area in which to specialize in which demand to supply ratio is greater than other fields, so that the salaries are markedly higher.

TomkoTech

"Markedly higher" isn't going to happen without experience. No one is going to be able to predict what the economy will be like in the future, however 2 years is next to no time. Take a look at the BLS. You should be able to discern what the best career path for you is. As for cloud, Citrix or VMware is currently where the money is. Yes knowing Hyper-V is good, but I haven't seen as many job postings looking for strictly MS based cloud certs as there are for VCP and CCA.

zrockstar

Big data. Learn Hadoop and you will be pretty future proof.

petedude

Given how cyclical IT is, I'm wondering. . . what happens after the cloud phase? In many cases, "offloading to the cloud" is simply a hyped synonym for "outsourcing".

Are IT companies going to repackage in-house IT services and equipment under some other cute name in the future and bring that back? Or will there be some change in technology that might demand bringing things "local" again?

Asif Dasl

Good point petedude, I've thought about that alright... it was mainframe computing, then desktop computing then cloud computing. It's gone from centralised to decentralised and back to centralised again. But I think it will stay at cloud computing and centralised processing power and storage as a service for the foreseeable future.

Best way to future proof your career is to be specialised in many different aspects which is a little hard to do, because you need relevant experience and the right type of position where you don't get stuck in one type of technology or another.

jibbajabba

zrockstar wrote: »

Big data. Learn Hadoop and you will be pretty future proof.

They said that about MiniDisc and HD DVD as well

I think my point is : You never know .. it can all change in a heartbeat .. I'd say don't go with anything which may or may not have a future but go with a topic which interests you.

If you cannot stand swimming then you shouldn't go with a diving certification just because it is the future, you'd hate every minute of it and cannot wait to get back on dry land

darkerosxx

Big Data and virtualization of existing hardware and functions (NFV/SDN), with specific technologies in the next 5-7 years being hadoop and openstack.

networker050184

In my opinion the best thing to do is just find an area of IT to get into. Systems, networking, database, storage etc. From there it will be much easier to understand and follow the trends of that certain area. Chasing from one big thing to another is going to constantly leave you too far behind.

MSP-IT

Although it's nice to look at the future and try to anticipate what may be the next emerging technology, I've found it better to live day by day and adapt to the demands of the business. As long as you don't have your head in the cloud (pun not intended), you'll be fine.

Analyze, adapt, grow, repeat.

Snow.bros

MSP-IT wrote: »

As long as you don't have your head in the cloud (pun not intended)

Lol sounded like it was intended.

MSP-IT

Snow.bros wrote: »

Lol sounded like it was intended.

It actually should have been "head in the clouds", but my brain did the mental switch, so I guess it is intended.

europop

Yes, I'm well aware that experience is important too, that goes without saying.

I don't see cloud as being outsourcing per se. I see it more as higher availability, more productive etc. Private cloud can be as controlled as much as a server room in the room behind you.

It's true I need to choose an area to focus like networking, storage etc. Sadly I'm not good at that. I'm hoping with some cloud certs I could maybe keep it broad but within a new platform...maybe wishful thinking on my part.

xnx

Why did the term 'cloud' become so popular.....?

People seem to hype it up and some marketing people seem not to realise that all it is, is a set of servers...

kohr-ah

xnx wrote: »

Why did the term 'cloud' become so popular.....?

People seem to hype it up and some marketing people seem not to realise that all it is, is a set of servers...

Because the people in power who dont understand technology dont really know where their servers are. They just know they aren't at their office and assume it is floating in some magical IT cloud out there and it is the greatest thing ever (I kid you not)

GarudaMin

The greatest thing you can do for the people in power who don't understand technology is to tell them that Cloud means someone else's computer (except you are hosting your own cloud). I am not saying that it's a bad thing and I am also not saying that it's a good thing. It depends on what you are using it for and what you will be storing there. Risks should be calculated based on that. But one thing that needs to be kept in mind is at the end of the day you are using or storing your data on someone else's computer.

adam220891

Well, as far as I can tell, routing/switching isn't going anywhere. Not really any way to outsource that (which is really what a lot of these cloud services are).

VMWare + VoIP + SAN/other storage technologies will continue to grow in importance. The more you know, the better off you'll be. But never forget to have a solid foundation...skipping the basics will get you nowhere.

A lot of this cloud stuff is nothing new. Thin clients, remote applications, etc. have been common for a long time. My personal concern is things like Exchange and fileservers being hosted 'in the cloud.' It takes some know-how to set these services up and keep them running, but companies may decide to pay another company a monthly fee instead of you, the IT professional, to manage these in house.