The Quiet Before the Next IT Revolution

snydeq writes: Now that the technologies behind our servers and networks have stabilized, IT can look forward to a different kind of constant change, writes Paul Venezia. "In IT, we are actually seeing a bit of stasis. I don't mean that the IT world isn't moving at the speed of light — it is — but the technologies we use in our corporate data centers have progressed to the point where we can leave them be for the foreseeable future without worry that they will cause blocking problems in other areas of the infrastructure. What all this means for IT is not that we can finally sit back and take a break after decades of turbulence, but that we can now focus less on the foundational elements of IT and more on the refinements. ... In essence, we have finally built the transcontinental railroad, and now we can use it to completely transform our Wild West."

Re:Horseshit

[davester666]

alternately, it will soon be time for the pendulum to swing back to "we've got to have everything in-house, these security breaches are killing us" and "dumb terminals and having everything in the 'cloud' is killing productivity when the cloud is down, we need real apps so users can work even when the cloud doesn't"

Wrong

[idji]

No, you IT people are no longer the great revolutionists - your time is gone. You are now just plumbers, who need to fix the infrastructure when it are broken. Other than that, we don't want to hear from you, and we certainly don't want your veto on our business decisions - that is why a lot of us business people use the cloud, because the cloud doesn't say "can't work, takes X months, and I need X M$ to set it up", but is running tomorrow out of operational budget.

Looking at the past...

[CaptainOfSpray]

...like a dinosaur in the last days before the meteor. The future is over there in the Makerspaces, where 3D printing, embedded stuff, robotics, CNC machines, homebrew PCBs at dirt-cheap prices are happening. It's all growing like weeds, crosses the boundaries between all disciplines includg art, and is an essential precursor to the next Industrial Revolution, in which you and your giant installations will be completely bypassed.

You, sir, are a buggy-whip manufacturer (as well as a dinosaur).

Re:A rather simplistic hardware-centric view

[SuricouRaven]

Even software is slowing down, though. A lot of the commodity software reached the point of 'good enough' years ago - look how long it's taken to get away from XP, and still many organisations continue to use it. The same is true of office suites: For most people, they don't use any feature not present in Office 95. Updating software has gone from an essential part of the life cycle to something that only needs to be done every five years, sometimes longer.

Around 2025 we will probably see a repeat of the XP situation as Microsoft tries desperately to get rid of the vast installed base of Windows 7, and organisations point out that what they have been using for the last decade works fine so they have no reason to upgrade.

Re:Horseshit

[some old guy]

I envy your optimism and agree that ISPs are the problem, but I don't see how new companies and services will force change upon ISPs.

New ISPs? Not in the state-sanctioned monopolist USA.

Loss of customers? See above.

The ISP and backbone provider bridge trolls sleep soundly, knowing that no one has the money or statutory permission to build competing bridges.

Only the FCC and Congress could do that, and the oligarchs are quite happy with the current bridge trolls.

Re:A rather simplistic hardware-centric view

[SuricouRaven]

I'm talking about new product major versions, not just patches.

The only reason many organisations are ditching XP right now is that MS stopped supplying updates. That isn't "Getting new software to further advance the organisation." That's more "Reluctantly going through the testing and training nightmare of a major deployment because Microsoft want to obsolete our otherwise-satisfactory existing software."

Re:If you didn't know what you were doing ...

[Iamthecheese]

Programming in good code isn't hard at all. What's hard is programming well when you're on the fifth "all hands on deck" rush job this year, you have two years of experience and no training because your company was too cheap to pay a decent wage or train you, a humiliating and useless performance review is just 'round the corner, and you doubt anything you type will end up in the final product. The problem is a widespread cultural one. When IT companies are willing to spend the time and money for consistent quality that's when they'll start to put out quality products.

Re:If you didn't know what you were doing ...

[See Attached]

Agreed 100% There is never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over. Reviews that admit success, but celebrate weakness are not positive experiences. There is another trend of third parties marketing infrastructure solutions to high level management, skipping local subject matter experts. This triples the work we have to do. change is fine, and embraced, but we are paid for something. Provide stability and compliance in a rapidly evolving globalized environment.