How the Cloud is Influencing Tech

server stacks

In the mid 1960s, Intel’s Gordon Moore predicted that the capacity of transistors and integrated circuits would double every year, envisioning the future of the digital revolution, hence “Moore’s Law.” As storage mediums become smaller, more powerful, and less expensive to manufacture, it has allowed for the storage of large repositories of data to reside at certain various locations and the emergence of Cloud Computing services. Competition among cloud server providers has been keeping prices down, as companies sacrifice profits to focus on future growth potential.

The concept of “The Cloud” has been around for decades, but became an industry term when the explosion of social site networking, blogging, and the general internet behavior labeled “Web 2.0”, began to wane to be replaced by a new phase in need of a definition. Some key players in this new phase, like Amazon and Google, are survivors of the Dot-com bubble at the turn of the millennium while others steadily spring up anew.

Of major impact by Cloud Computing, is the future of certain tech jobs. Positions such as server administrator, business collaboration platform administrator, support specialist, and PC repair technician, are soon to be altered, replaced, or disappear altogether.

With the virtualization of servers, the need for system administrators to set-up and configure physical servers, diminishes. Cloud hosted email is rendering business collaborative platforms like Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise obsolete, eliminating the demand for that expertise. As outsourcing grows, many of the Help Desk and Level I support positions are being replaced by outsourcing companies, many of which are located overseas.

As the necessity of powerful desktops and home storage gets nullified by Cloud storage, Software as a service (Saas) and Platforms as a service (Paas), consumers are becoming more inclined to purchase tablet PCs and mobile devices. More than half of all internet access is through a mobile device, and that percentage is rapidly increasing. With Apple products “not be worked on” by design, and Android devices so affordable that it’s more cost-effective to replace them with newer ones, the job of the PC repair technician is becoming like the “Maytag Repairman” of times past.

To be involved in the technology industry today, one must be nimble and able to adapt to increasingly rapid change, which also happens to be the beauty of it! Perhaps it’s those on-going challenges which are sure to arise, that attracts certain individuals to the field.

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