where is the IT world going next?

Well I’m just about to start a course in September. The course is 4 years in total 3 years in education, 1 year in industry, the year in industry is between the second and third year of the course. The idea of the first 2 years is a very intense learning curve where you learn both theories and application. You should end up coming out of the first to years of education with skills in Programming, Hardware, Law related to computer, Mathematics, specify uses of technology (i.e. internet and networks), business, network and system administration as well as development (both software and hardware), also they encourage the use of Mac and pc as well as a multitude of OS platforms. The idea is that after the very intense 2 years (week averages out at 40 hours of tuition) the student i.e. myself has a very broad base and in so can go into any area of the industry, the industry year is a placement year they encourage you to go into as many areas as you can without making you time in each too short to understand the job, it a balance thing. Once you have don this year you third year of education is totally open in that you can specialise in any area of computing you wish to, or multiply areas form your experience in the third year of education.

This course is new in fact only 2 year old the idea is to produce computer students that have a range of basic skills in most areas and specific higher level skill in other. This is to try and produce IT professional that can work in many areas or the areas where the definition of the 2 jobs blur. Looking at the IT processional world there is a call for this type of professional with it moving so fast this basic knowledge in all areas allow in theory at least the IT professional to move fluidly with the evolution of technology. This is where I think IT is going. In time you will not have the rigid definition of you IT job but a few areas you work in and a team, each member of the team having basic skill in all areas required for the company/organisation, each member of the team will specialise in different areas, so the workload will be fluid and dynamic within the team. That is what this course is aiming to create, within the third year of education you have a team project as well as your personal one, each of you in the team work tighter but each have different specialisations and the team is set a problem that may arise with the industry to solve tighter. More and more education institutes appear to be going this way in.

Kindred69

Not an expert of course, but it seems to me that technology keeps on growing and expanding. Don't know about the short term, but it seems to me that long term IT will keep on expanding. More and more people are becoming computer literate and growing accustomed to advanced technologies. The companies that create and maintain these technologies will need people to build and run them. :)

I agree with what preacherman481 said...that there are more people who are becoming computer literate. The problem becomes one of having a lot of IT/IS people entering the market (for big bucks mostly) who have experience in a certain facet of the industry (Oracle, UNIX, Win2K, etc) - but have little to no knowledge in how to secure their entire enterprise. People may be experts in Oracle or Unix, but how many people know how to secure the entire organization (from router and firewall to desktop)? Or at least have an understanding of what the component does?

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Maybe there will be some new wonder product that will stimulate the world economy and get everyone back on their feet again.

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Hmmmm...I wonder what that could be. Hopefully someone will invent something. I mean imagine if we didn't have the internet, how would life be then? I'm guessing it would be a lot different.

But what else can there be? Have we ran out of things to invent? I'm sure in the future (hopefully the near future) we will have some great new invention (or wonder product, as gold eagle says) that will create more IT jobs and raise the whole industry up above all expectations. :)

Greg

smirc - Most of us agree with IT shops taking responsibility for their work. Except that group in Redmon. Wonder product? How about a computer type of unit that does your daily planning and talks to you.
the_Jinx - not sure which part of the world you live in but some areas have lost hundreds of thousands of workers - often a large percentage IT types in the last year.

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Wonder product? How about a computer type of unit that does your daily planning and talks to you.

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Hmm...what about a PDA or Pocket PC? They can plan your day no worries, that's what they wre designed to do. They can play MP3's now, so I'm sure you could make them talk to you.

I dunno, how about wireless Internet? I know, it's kinda already out in someplaces, like airports, but I was thinking EVERYWHERE. So wherever you go, you could be connected with your Palm or PocketPC. Just like a mobile phone, but with the net as well. I know you can have WAP now, I got WAP, but it ain't nothing special.

What I'm thinking is have your Palm/PocketPC with everything a PC has now. You got your browser, IM clients, etc. All the things you normally use. I mean if they get the technology right, which I think they kinda have, except it would need to take a lot more bandwidth and be cheaper, it would really take off. I think that's where it's going...slowly...

I really don't know what else could be a new invention. Hmm...maybe I'll try hard and think of something. Would be good to invent something...oh yeah, money...nice house...nice car. :d

Greg

Well, as for here in Houston, our economy is sucking the big one. (See Net_Syn's condom tutorial) Of course we have the whole Enron ordeal. Not to mention all the cuts with Continental and lets not forget about the Compaq/Hp Merge. So basically Houston got the shaft.

However, I was watching the news this morning and it had mention something about some huge Technology Comany coming to downtown, in the Enron building.(Currently Occupied by the FBI.) So I see the Information Technology profession booming in the next 5 years on a wide scale, not only here in Houston.

DR toker - Maybe they can hire some of the people who lost their jobs at enron and work in the same building. I hope that happens. I knew some enron staff.

There are still a lot of IT jobs out there that go unfilled. The biggest problem is management budgets. IT isn't getting paid like it did 1.5 years ago, so people are not taking the jobs. I know about 10 different people I graduated with that are not working in IT, because they don't want a computer bassed job that pays less the 35k per year. Recently, I saw 20+ IT jobs in my area available, but all paid 20k to 25k per year, and computer geeks don't want to work that cheap.