Leave it to a politician to explain how the IT field is going to disappear. "As we move toward the cloud and technology gets easier to use", and who supports these technologies Mr. Mayor?
He's not saying it will disappear, but that it's changing. IT jobs will continue to exist, but they'll be moving to service providers rather than being kept in-house.
And, frankly, this makes sense - if you pay provider X to host your mail server, you're paying them for both the hardware needs (which they can buy in bulk because they're bigger than you) and their expertise (as they're spending their days exclusively maintaining mail servers, while you may be building a webserver one day and fixing a printer
That's great. Trade people who work for you for people who don't work for you at all. They have their own boss and interests that completely conflict with yours. Unless you're really good a negotiating contracts with companies much larger than your own, you are likely just going to get screwed over.
Trade your IT department for one which is much larger and even less responsive that has a contractual firewall and a corporate air gap separating it from you.
You don't have to trade the whole department. But instead of hiring 5 administrators with various levels of expertise, you can hire 2 or 3 and let the experts deal with their systems.
As for those other people? Of course they're not working for you. But they're working for their bosses who are working for your business. Believe it or not, there are companies out there whose sole purpose in life is not to screw you over. Trust is earned - let them earn yours.
They are working for your business and 10 others. They have no incentive to treat you any better, nor do they have any need to do better than the 4 hour response time or whatever the SLA says. The moment supporting you costs more than you pay forget about it.
Not only do they have those employees but they also need to make a profit on them. So it will not be cheaper either.
They are working for your business and 10 others. They have no incentive to treat you any better, nor do they have any need to do better than the 4 hour response time or whatever the SLA says.
When the interface between your company and your service provider is standardized, you can change providers easily. They have incentive to treat you better than their competitors, because if not you will take your business elsewhere.
Not only do they have those employees but they also need to make a profit on them. So it will not be cheaper either.
There are economies of scale here. One data center hosting storage for 1000 companies is going to require far fewer employees than 1000 separate IT departments.
There is no such standardized interface. If you are lucky you can download your users mailbox backup one at a time by hand and load that at the new provider. Then use something like imapsync to sync them. Provided they give you imap access. It will be a huge pain to switch providers and they know it. This will impact how they treat you.
At some point you already have similar economies of scale. Also you get direct access to those folks, unlike the outsourced staff.
If you have less than 100 workers go for it, over that and it may well be better done in house.
Hah (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
He's not saying it will disappear, but that it's changing. IT jobs will continue to exist, but they'll be moving to service providers rather than being kept in-house.
And, frankly, this makes sense - if you pay provider X to host your mail server, you're paying them for both the hardware needs (which they can buy in bulk because they're bigger than you) and their expertise (as they're spending their days exclusively maintaining mail servers, while you may be building a webserver one day and fixing a printer
Re: (Score:5, Informative)
That's great. Trade people who work for you for people who don't work for you at all. They have their own boss and interests that completely conflict with yours. Unless you're really good a negotiating contracts with companies much larger than your own, you are likely just going to get screwed over.
Trade your IT department for one which is much larger and even less responsive that has a contractual firewall and a corporate air gap separating it from you.
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to trade the whole department. But instead of hiring 5 administrators with various levels of expertise, you can hire 2 or 3 and let the experts deal with their systems.
As for those other people? Of course they're not working for you. But they're working for their bosses who are working for your business. Believe it or not, there are companies out there whose sole purpose in life is not to screw you over. Trust is earned - let them earn yours.
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
They are working for your business and 10 others. They have no incentive to treat you any better, nor do they have any need to do better than the 4 hour response time or whatever the SLA says. The moment supporting you costs more than you pay forget about it.
Not only do they have those employees but they also need to make a profit on them. So it will not be cheaper either.
Re: (Score:0)
They are working for your business and 10 others. They have no incentive to treat you any better, nor do they have any need to do better than the 4 hour response time or whatever the SLA says.
When the interface between your company and your service provider is standardized, you can change providers easily. They have incentive to treat you better than their competitors, because if not you will take your business elsewhere.
Not only do they have those employees but they also need to make a profit on them. So it will not be cheaper either.
There are economies of scale here. One data center hosting storage for 1000 companies is going to require far fewer employees than 1000 separate IT departments.
Re:Hah (Score:3)
There is no such standardized interface. If you are lucky you can download your users mailbox backup one at a time by hand and load that at the new provider. Then use something like imapsync to sync them. Provided they give you imap access. It will be a huge pain to switch providers and they know it. This will impact how they treat you.
At some point you already have similar economies of scale. Also you get direct access to those folks, unlike the outsourced staff.
If you have less than 100 workers go for it, over that and it may well be better done in house.