Technology Trends Shaping IT Jobs

At a recent conference this past summer in Florida, technology research organization Gartner Group presented ten trends that are changing how IT professionals will be doing their jobs. Although many of the trends as reported by TechTarget.com were not necessarily news to technologists, here are several interesting takes on how the trends will likely impact IT jobs in the near-term future.

As the "technological landscape" become increasingly more complex, IT professionals will be forced into be more "generalists" and have a broad base of skills. Although there will likely still be a need for technologists with specialized knowledge and skills in specific applications as well as in networking and storage, as IT become more integrated, so will people who will be able to work across disciplines.

With the consumerization of IT, Gartners analysts believe that service desks will become somewhat obsolete via crowdsourcing. The Wikipedia definition certainly supports that contention by defining it as "a distributed problem-solving and production model. In the classic use of the term, problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions." Clearly, service desks will not be necessary if end users can find answers on their own about devices and applications online via friends, online forums, or social networks.