Yaws

As virtualization and other new data center technologies take root, watch new career opportunities open. Here's how to make the most of what's coming.

It's 4:45 Friday afternoon at your Boston headquarters, and you're itching to head out to tonight's 2009 World Series game between your Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs. You deserve a victory tonight as much as anyone in the city You've just finished rolling out the latest Microsoft-SAP Business Suite to 20 business units across the country a project that also meant migrating several Linux servers to the newly released Windows 2009 operating system.

Checking your e-mail one last time, you discover Microsoft has just issued a patch covering critical vulnerabilities in Windows 2009. No problem.You download the patch, and it automatically gets tested for your environment and against the new Business Suite. Assured that the patch won't break anything, you hit another button and roll it out to the servers. By 5:15, you're on the train to Fenway Park.

Far-fetched? Not as much as you might think at first. Over the next five years, new data center technologies such as virtualization, Web-centric computing, ondemand computing and autonomic computing will become entrenched. Network professionals then will find themselves free of the more mundane tasks that today fill their days, and they will be ready to tackle more strategic projects - faster and more efficiently

The virtual job

"It's already happening here," says Paul Theisen, IS director at The Tech Group, a manufacturer of plastic injection molding in Scottsdale, Ariz. "We already have application and server virtualization, and we've had virtualization of the disk and storage environment for quite some time. Eventually we'll reach the point where we'll literally have virtualization of service levels. And suddenly we'll have virtualized just about everything the data center offers."

That's the point feared by many of today's IT and network staffers. After weathering the dot-corn bust and the down economy will they have survived only to virtualize themselves out of a job in five years?

"That's a misconception about this technology," says Bob Venable, manager of enterprise systems at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee in Chattanooga. "It's not that you don't have anything to do anymore, but that it frees people up from drudgery Yes, they're deferring a bit of control to a tool, but it frees them up to do the more strategic things they should have been doing all along if they had the time."

BlueCross says it has saved $1.5 million per year through more-efficient use of its storage capacity and less downtime by using McData's SANavigator storage-area network management software and IBM Tivoli Storage Resource Manager. The company also recently implemented IBM's SAN Volume Controller virtualization software to further reduce data management costs.

"With virtualization, we spend a whole lot less time fighting fires and far more time thinking and planning strategically," Venable says. "People are able to do better projects - more of what they're paid to do. They're still in their same roles. They just spend less time on the mechanics of storage and more time thinking ahead."

Most IT organizations are finding virtualization lets them keep staffing levels flat, even as projects and customers increase.

Overall, virtualization simplifies things, but it doesn't reduce our staffing requirements," says Paul Little, configuration manager at Fidelity Information Services, a division of Fidelity National Financial in San Diego. Fidelity uses virtualization tools from VMware and Softricity not only to reduce the number of Windows, AS/400 and Unix servers it needs to maintain, but also to simplify the provisioning of a horne-grown, commercial, lending package to its internal customers nationwide. "It just makes it so we don't need to hire more people as we get more customers or get more work," he says.

New skills required

Still, network executives looking ahead five years to this era of data center automation would do best to develop some new skills and polish old standbys.

First comes studying new data center technologies, be they big platforms such as IBM's On Demand or HP's Adaptive Enterprise, or point virtualization products from vendors such as Opsware, Softricity Topspin Communications and VMware. Network professionals who readily understand not only how virtualization works, but also how best to deploy it, will be at a premium over the next few years.

"We're just now beginning to see the demand rise here," says Terry Phillips, branch manager for Robert Half Technology, an IT staffing firm in Columbus, Ohio. "The key is not to focus so much on a specific software or technology but more on the theory or methodology of implementing them."

Users agree. "If you try to specialize too early on in a trend like this . . . you may end up painting yourself into a corner if that becomes one of the products that doesn't survive," says James Yaws, director of data center operations at The Dallas Morning News."It's better to be product-neutral while you're learning about the technology and while it is growing momentum."

The ability to communicate virtualization's value will be indispensable, users say.

"People who can see the big picture are more valuable, absolutely," says Lenny Monsour, manager of hosting and infrastructure services at Inflow, a data center outsourcing firm in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. Inflow recently implemented Opsware's automation software to improve its ratio of servers to administrators from 66-to-1 to 150-to-1, a change that let it take on new customers and applications without hiring new staff. "Its difficult to replace that senior person who can think strategically and understand technology and how it helps the business," he says.

The Tech Groups Theisen agrees that business skills and relating to the business will become increasingly important. "When you virtualize things suddenly you're not building servers, playing with hard disks or installing applications," he says. "Instead, you're provisioning service levels that are needed by an organization to accomplish a business objective. It's definitely a higher skill set. In order to support the business effectively with planning and project building and support, we have to really understand what it's after"

He recommends mentoring. "Education in corporate America is going to be better than chasing an [Masters of Business Administration] if you want to grow in IT," he says. "Find a mentor on the business side who can guide you through the issues; make sure the person is qualified. Does he understand the skills you're trying to hone, and will he take the time to walk you through?"

Specialize - to a point

But say you've gotten to that point. You've learned the technology, rolled it out, met the business objectives and freed yourself from the drudgery - what then? Time to specialize, the experts say.

"Most organizations will find eventually that they can allow a less senior individual to provide them with operation on the network," Robert Half's Phillips explains. "That leaves the more core network staffers to specialize in things like architecture, strategy, design and planning. It also leaves them free to explore new technologies, maybe a little [research and development], things like security and wireless."

Users say specialization will become almost a necessity as new technologies roll out to take advantage of the virtualized data center. "Just keeping on top of what's possible will be a challenge," Fidelity's Little says. He recommends focusing on areas such as security, storage infrastructure and distributed technologies such as grid computing that all will come into play as virtualization takes hold.

Eventually the network staff might specialize itself into a different entity entirely, says Brian Young, vice president of IT at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.

"It will come full circle," he says. "About four years ago, you started to see one person on the networking team emerge as the security officer. Well, five years from now, as less time needs to be spent keeping the network up and running, you're going to find everyone morphing into more of a network security team or a strategic architecture team and just one person emerging as the general networking officer''

Another specialty will be customer service. As virtualization and automation take hold, organizations will be able to push more day-to-day network tasks out to the end-user level. "That is where we're trying to get," Inflow's Monsour says. For example, he says, users eventually should be able to place online orders for network resources based on service-level agreements. An automation engine would trigger order placement with a local partner, which could provision the resources based on established baselines. The IT department need not be involved.

Network professionals with good customer service skills will be in great demand to help with troubleshooting over the phone. That takes a different mindset and skills from those required for fixing systems directly, says Yaws of The Dallas Morning News.

Do these changes spell the end of todays hands-on network techies? Not necessarily although as more tasks get automated and disappear, one techie will be able to manage ever-larger numbers of systems. While that won't necessarily mean job loss, it could mean that demand for these hands-on jobs will increase at a slower pace. Even with automation, hands-on testing and R&D remain, Monsour notes.

BlueCross'Venable describes the changing role for network specialists: "They will be tinkering with new things. I'm a linkerer and an engineer, but now I'm tinkering with money, people and processes. It's a higher level of work, especially for someone who likes being challenged by putting things together. Once the network is virtualized, they're going to have a lot bigger things to tinker with."

Cummings is a freelance writer in North Andouer,Mass. She can be reached at jocummings @comcast.net.

Copyright Network World Inc. Jul 26, 2004
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