On Sundays I offer comments on some of the most interesting information technology stories that I have found on the web that week.  Please feel free to join in the discussion or suggest stories during the week.

I have found that the best indicator in the Information Technology field that a technological revolution is real vice imagined is when people start trying to tear it down using fear, uncertainty, and doubt vice scientific arguments.  I have previously written about how Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) are the next “big things” and today’s news story fully supports that conclusion.

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This week’s news story comes from CIO.com – The Tech Jobs That the Cloud Will Eliminate:

“As if outsourcing, virtualization, utility computing, automation, hosted applications, and a recession weren’t enough to stress out the average IT professional, there’s the emerging threat of cloud computing to take away even more IT jobs. “

This well written story is unfortunately your standard fare for situation.  It focuses on how enterprise’s move to cloud computing will eliminate tons of local IT service jobs, database engineering positions, help desk support spots, and hands-on tech workers.  While it does note that it may open up the requirement for more mid-grade management and IT service jobs, it will reduce the technical demands on those jobs.  It also notes that all of those IT jobs that get moved to supporting the cloud computing centers will most likely be in new, more remote locations, or even overseas, to take advantage of the economic incentives of those geographic choices.  Overall, the article suggests that the sky is dark, the end is near, and there is nothing that anyone can do about it. 

That is exactly the formula that these sort of opinionated stories always take and why I am always so skeptical of them.

I, on the other hands, believe that the Information Age is very young.  I think that the IT profession is even more immature.  While, I acknowledge that cloud computing adoption will change many facets of our profession, I see it as just another step in our evolution.  I expect that cloud computing will empower an entire generation of new IT growth and innovation.  I don’t think that we can even imagine today what pent up new technologies will be unleashed by the creativity released when IT pros across the world can reduce their attention to the “nuts and bolts” of servers and start to concentrate on the core competencies of their actual businesses.  Just like, today, we don’t all create our own power, water, or sunlight, yet we consume them for IT services, tomorrow, we will just move storage, computing cycles, and load balancing into the “utility” category.  IT is here to stay.  Tomorrow’s workers will need more technology leverage, not less.  Tomorrow’s economy will require more total IT knowledge workers – not less.

Don’t buy the fear, uncertainty, and doubt.  In fact, if you want proof that cloud computing is a real transformative technology trend, the arrival of this type of “news story” is exactly that validation.

Do you agree with me?  Are there other cloud computing FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) stories, like this one, out there?  Please share with us.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for July 26, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin

Image Credit: networksasia.net

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