IT Desktop Support To Be Wiped Out Thanks To Cloud Computing 349
An anonymous reader writes "Tech industry experts are saying that desktop support jobs will be declining sharply thanks to cloud computing. Why is this happening? A large majority of companies and government agencies will rely on the cloud for more than half of their IT services by 2020, according to Gartner's 2011 CIO Agenda Survey."
Re:Survey? (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad part is nobody seems to remember we have been down this road before....show of hands, anybody remember the whole "thin client push" in the dot bomb days? I sure do, you had all these companies pushing "the net/server' would solve everything, all your IT needs and problems just poof! Gone. anybody else remember that? So what happened?
The exact same things that is gonna happen this time, worries about data security, having a whole office sitting on ass if the network ever goes down, lag and crappy hosted apps not being as good as rich desktop apps, which BTW none of these problems have been solved by replacing net or server with cloud. I guess history doomed repeat and all that.
Yep, and long before that we had unix terminals connected to a central host. "Cloud computing" will hit the enterprise, and in a few years the enterprise will move on to something else.
Unlikely... (Score:4, Interesting)
Even as more apps are becoming web based, in the short to medium term users will still be accessing them using the same desktops they always have and will still need support for them.
Perhaps long term, users can move to simpler dumb terminals that have less to go wrong and thus require less support. But that's less, not none... Things can still go wrong, one of the primary functions of desktop support is unjamming printers and replacing toner which despite promises of the paperless office won't be going away any time soon.
There will also be a need to debug network level issues, as a dumb terminal is useless without its network...
So sure, desktop support will be reduced but not "wiped out"...
Time to start taking the Cloud seriously (Score:5, Interesting)
There's an awful lot of scepticism on slashdot about the cloud, which is healthy in a way, but I think in general people are hugely underestimating the impact that cloud computing is going to have on IT deployment. It is going to affect us all; software as a service holds huge challenges for the free software movement, some skillsets such as traditional IT support are not going to be as useful, and the way we write software is going to change further.
I'm no cloud zealot, I've just been reading about it a lot and talking to Cloud providers (some large, some medium-sized) and academic experts. I've tried to answer the many points that have been brought up here:
-- "We've been down this road before."
We have, but things *are* different now. Firstly, we have sophisticated and mature virtualisation technologies that allow efficient coresidency and management of VMs. Costs per CPU hour have dropped. Internet access is incredibly pervasive. The "post-PC" era of tablets and smart phones are producing a huge demand for cloud-based storage and services. Does this mean cloud will automatically be successful? No. Does it mean that comparisons with previous era's are not necessarily correct? Yes. If you want another example, tablets didn't 'work' in the past... but now they do.
-- Moving to the cloud won't change anything.
Yes, and no. We will still need IT to manage the cloud services, and engineer bespoke cloud products. Users will still require support. But you're no longer talking about rolling out O/S updates across your company, or installing the latest version of Word. No more capital investment in some server hardware, no more long-term planning of purchases of those servers. If a thin client is broken, you just replace it, and maintaining those thin clients is a hell of a lot easier if they're dumb.
-- Bespoke solution X won't work on the cloud.
No, it won't. But your Exchange server certainly can be moved to the cloud quite easily. In fact, many companies start their move to the cloud with Exchange, and then migrate to live apps... the point is, that you don't have to move *everything* to the cloud in order to make savings and find other benefits.
My advice is, go learn about cloud computing, start looking at the architectures that cloud applications use. Read up on Amazon Web Services and try it out. Take a look at Google App Engine. Read a few books looking at the business case for the cloud before you dismiss it.
RS
Re:Survey? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Survey? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having really dumb terminals does simplify end support though. Computer not working? Pull it out, put in a new one. Send the old one back to the manufacturer. It means one IT worker can support many more computers, and needs less training thus lower pay.
Only if you've divided up your roles... But so many companies have people "wearing many hats" that, in practice, it will be the same person doing the virtualization AND the "desktop" support of the virtual-desktops... Which means he'll need far MORE training than current helpdesk people. In fact, what it really does is makes IT hiring that much harder for most organizations because now you can't just hire somebody who knows Windows desktops for the helpdesk/workstation VM admin role--you would need to hire somebody who knows VDI or Xen Desktop (or something else.)
I refute it thus (kicks user) (Score:4, Interesting)
With the increase in mobile computing and potential to see the desktop PC effectively vanish in 20 years (or less!), you will still have people who not only shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a means of communication more complex than smoke signals, and you will still need someone at the ready with a fire extinguisher. The current generation of tech savvy middle school age children will, of course, be part of that next generation of mobile users. However, problems happen. Mobile users will, most likely, still have an office which needs to be set up, which needs to have a person come and assist in problems. They will still need face to face time to help sort out issues, train in the use of a device, and possibly troubleshoot. I have many users who experience abject terror at the prospect of setting up even the most simple minded of USB printers, activating a phone, or even plugging in speakers! Odds are such phobia won't just up and vanish.
There is also a more human element that many people desire when dealing with technical issues. Perhaps we'll see more situations like Apple's genius bar, or *shudder* Geek Squad, taking shape in the business of support. But who knows? At this point, pundits shouldn't attempt to speculate about the IT industry in 2 years, let alone 8 or 20.
Re:Survey? (Score:2, Interesting)
Doubtful on all observations. What I really see, is everyone trying to use cell phones like they would a computer. Roughly translated, that means that the business world will run to programmers to sort out their fuzzy-wuzzy-dohicky needs. Most people loath analytical thinking. I don't mean they aren't interested. They HATE it.
The bottom line is that another business sector in the U.S. will be ruined by empty suits who can't be bothered with "small" affairs. If the help desk can't break through the "blooie" (for the uninitiated, Blue "E" or Internet Explorer") ignorance, just wait until the programmers have to.
No, really! Go to the Wall St. Journal site and see how many CEO's are 6 foot or more tall Lurchs who think they have a clue about anything other than destroying infrastructure in the name of the stock holders. The rich want arm twisters. They don't want technology unless it's in the form of a strap-on that they can shame their fellow stock holders with at their next party. Big, BIG MEN!
What a dumbass country. It can't fail fast enough.
Re:Survey? (Score:5, Interesting)
Individual PCs can prevent "everyone is down due to the cloud", even with a server-centric or even thinclient architecture. I've worked at such places where there hasn't been a single network-wide outage for periods of 6-8 months with regularity.
Guess what it means, though? You've got to:
* buy enough of the right kind of equipment
* hire the right people to manage said equipment
* hire enough people to maintain those systems
Short of catastrophic equipment failure, there are few reasons for such outages. A properly maintained environment doesn't have these problems (with any regularity).
Re:Survey? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's called "Bring Your Own Device" or "Bring Your Own Technology" depending on who you talk to.
Right now it's all the buzz in educational technology circles, as school districts think that it'll let them reduce their IT budgets while providing more access. The thing they fail to realize is that every major K12 educational software success story is backed by hundreds of failures because it's rare to find people that both know how to educate and know how to write good software. Programmers rarely actually know what the teacher and students truly need, and teachers write shit code and lack basic understanding of the client/server model. I've seen this with typing software, test scoring software, reading comprehension software, and all sorts of other packages that simply do not implement client/server where the user can log in at any workstation and do the task at hand. Hell, Accelerated Reader, one of the most widespread ed reading packages, ran on friggin' MacOS 9 boxes as a server well past the debut of OSX.
They want little johnny to be able to e-mail/sms/mms his answer to the electronic whiteboard so that the teacher can display his and everyone else's answers to talk about them. They fail to even grasp the possibility of little johnny e-mailing "suzie likes cocks!" to the board, or a semicompromising picture of the teacher when she had bent down to deal with some crap the students messed up, and not having good filtering. Sure, the kid can get into trouble for this kind of thing, but that doesn't stop the teacher from losing control of the class, permanently.
Cloud, BYOD, all crap. All marketing terms. All a bunch of HIPPOs who think they know best who refuse to speak with their actual IT staff when making decisions. They're going to spend a boatload of money to "save money" and in the end they're going to be back to buying more computers.
I've seen it before, and I'll see it again.
Try it some time (Score:5, Interesting)
We just moved from "the cloud" exchange to local hosted exchange. This wasn't done on account of "we just felt like it" in fact central IT was very much against the idea. It was done on account of the epic amount of problems we were having. It didn't save on support, it took more support. We had to pay them for support AND have all kinds of on campus support for all the end user problems. Support slowed to a crawl trying to get shit fixed with all the finger pointing.
"The cloud" really just means "outsourcing" and as ever with that, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and it often depends on your size. If you are a 5 man small business, well than ya you have to outsource exchange, too expensive to have it internally. If you have 10,000 people, then it probably doesn't make sense.