Gartner: Half of US IT operations jobs to vanish

MacWorld.com ^ | 12-2-04 | Patrick Thibodeau

[soccer_linux_mozilla]

In an eyebrow-raising forecast, Gartner Inc. researchers said they believe that as many as 50 percent of the IT operational jobs in the U.S. could disappear over the next two decades because of improvements in data center technologies.

Donna Scott, a Gartner analyst, said IT workers face a situation similar to that in the manufacturing field, which has lost jobs over the past several decades as automation has improved. Similarly, standardization of IT infrastructure, applications and processes will lead to productivity improvements and a major shift in skill needs, she said.

"There will be more room to automate, and that means there will be reduced labor cost," said Scott. "This is a long-term change."

Gartner calls this change "real-time infrastructure," which involves service-oriented architectures, the elimination of communications barriers and dynamic alignment of IT with business priorities. Technologies enabling the shift have less need for human intervention because they are more intelligent and can automatically provision services and self-heal.

IT operations, which encompass areas such as systems administration, incident response and change management, today account for about 55 percent of an IT department's labor cost, said Scott, who spoke at the Stamford, Conn.-based research firm's annual data center conference here in Las Vegas. But as companies improve automation, IT operations become "more like a factory," said Scott. Demand will grow for employees who have IT architecture skills as well as those with business and customer-liaison knowledge. Project management, for instance, will rise in terms of the percentage of IT labor costs, she said.

[G32]

I'm staying in pure IT until I can finish my degree in business and get the heck out of this field.

[dagar]

Good thing I'm a Systems Architect!

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

Half of US IT operations jobs to vanish

Awesome news!!! Wow, technology is fantastic! First the horse and buggy driver gets replaced, then some of the manual assembly people, now half of the IT jobs. Great news! We're making progress!!!

And to think that unemployment always stays so incredibly low with this kind of thing happening... What a country!!!

[NonValueAdded]

Just look at all the commercials with the theme "you don't need IT guys."

[DeFault User]

Just like the improvements in automobile technology have eliminated the need for mechanics? I believe Bill Gates will keep the bugs a'comin'.

[trebb]

I hear there ain't many blacksmith jobs anymore. I don't recall the last time I saw the Ice Man coming around neither. I guess that when some jobs go away, others end up being created.

[KarlInOhio]

Read more at macworld.com ...

There's the problem - MacWorld. He is greatly underestimating the amount of work Bill Gates and gang are putting into making their operating systems and applications vulnerable to hacking and viruses and keep IT people employed.

[television is just wrong]

I agree. We will always need good IT people to keep our systems clear and running. New operating updates? More bugs, viruses, and other things to go wrong. Can't be helped.

[Revolting cat!]

Everybody knows the future.

[Rodney King]

Glad I'm not in IT.

[Brian328i]

We'll adjust and create new fields, no biggy...

[Bhrian]

Time to concentrate on business and science skills. Life sciences look best. With more and more senior citizens in the US there will be more need for drugs!

[Dilbert56]

As long as they don't come after us keypunchers.....

[ProudVet77]

Keyword operational jobs
Operations is considered overhead. People are always working on ways to reduce costs here. It used to take 1 full time person to support a single small OS that was used for development when I started out. And that did not include hardware support. Now you can support 100s of servers with a handful of people 24x7. It has to do with an increase in hardware quality, software quality and automation of maintenance activities.

[sinkspur]

Just look at all the commercials with the theme "you don't need IT guys."

You won't need as many IT Operations guys.

There are many data center locations in IBM and other major companies that are entered by no humans, unless a machine burps.

I remember the days of large shops with eight or ten operators: one at the system console, three or four changing tapes, another two changing removeable disk drives, and another who did nothing but attend to the system printer.

[Voltage]

There is a way to keep the jobs in the USA: CLICK

[Shryke]

Yep. IT is bye-bye. Think about. Remember all those things most people had to pay for someone to do dozens of years ago, and now do themselves? Like plumbing? And electrical work? Mechanics?

All of those are now being done by regular people!!

Seriously, show me a company that has an under-staffed IT department, and I'll show you a company that is bleeding money from innefficiency.

[Little Pig]

Those "You don't need IT guys" commercials are for small businesses that can't otherwise afford IT, or have no room for a datacenter. They take on the datacenter operations for the small company. However, they (the datacenter people) need IT too, to run their huge shops. Granted, not as many as if every company had their own IT, but still more than the 50% reduction talked about here.

[Tribune7]

In an eyebrow-raising forecast, Gartner Inc. researchers said they believe that as many as 50 percent of the IT operational jobs in the U.S. could disappear over the next two decades because of improvements in data center technologies.

No offense to the IT guys but this is a good thing.