MAster the cloud. IT Admins. and boost your career. ControlNow TM Whitepaper

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1 MAster the cloud IT Admins and boost your career ControlNow TM Whitepaper

2 Table of Contents Introduction 3 The IT stress factory 5 Get ahead of the cloud curve 6 The changing role of IT 7 Scoring some serious skills 8 FOLLOW US & SHARE IT Admins: Master the cloud and boost your career. 2

3 Introduction IT administrators jobs are undergoing a radical transformation, and admins that change with the times can see their careers move in a hot new direction. Smart admins understand these new dynamics, and are adapting now to meet these quickly emerging requirements. First, technology is changing with new services and existing core services moving to the cloud. Even more profound, the role of the IT admin can and will change with the proper harnessing of these cloud technologies and change for the better. Admins roles today vary depending on the size of the operation, but the fundamentals of change remain the same. In smaller IT organizations, admins manage nearly everything. In medium-size operations, admins carry a good-size load, managing several functions. For large companies, admins may be specialized, just keeping database, , or security systems running up to snuff for instance. These are all important jobs, especially in an organization largely dependent upon on-premises, inhouse systems. But traditional IT admin functions are moving in two directions. First, the job is getting bigger all the time, as admins are called on to manage mobile devices, continually enhance security, and handle a mix of on-premises and new cloud services. And all the while Shadow IT that is, IT solutions that are used inside an organization without approval, or management awareness is a growing thorn in ITs side. Despite all the new responsibilities, in the long run admin jobs will shrink. And if you are an admin, the choice is either have your career shrivel with it, or drive the change to new approaches that allow you to reinvent your very position. And while this may mean a bit of extra time researching cloud issues and trying cloud tools, it is well worth it for your career and for the good of your company. Today s changes in technology are the perfect opportunity for admins to move up the ranks. By promoting advances such as cloud services and new forms of automation, you dramatically reduce your own workload, but at the same time position yourself to be a more strategic player. Just look at many of the things an IT admin does and ask just how strategic they are now and in the future. One of the biggest tasks is simply fixing things when they break, a function largely relegated to on-premises systems. But fixing problems, as important as that is, is not strategic and does not drive your company s growth. The cloud changes how troubleshooting is done and the degree to which it is needed. For instance, when key systems tools such as patch management and anti-virus/anti-malware move to the cloud, these functions are made easier and the level of protection is usually greater. IT admin functions will change substantially in the coming years. Some of those tasks, if they don t go away entirely, will lessen considerably. Others will simply change, adapting to the new requirements of the cloud. FOLLOW US & SHARE IT Admins: Master the cloud and boost your career. 3

4 Introduction Take client devices. PCs will remain important for quite a while as they are the devices best suited for serious productivity; but this is no longer a growth area. And many applications and even storage will come from the cloud; so most configuration and patching tasks will have to do mainly with the core operating system. Client PCs, however, are expected to remain the productivity workhorse, and keeping these systems secure and performing remains critical. A combination of automation techniques and cloud-based IT admin tools, however, can greatly ease this support burden. At the same time, admins will be more and more increasingly charged with configuring, supporting and securing mobile devices. According to the U.S. government s Occupational Outlook Handbook, one of the most essential parts of an IT admin/sysadmin s job is problem solving basically fixing things. This break/fix approach can be a never ending treadmill, and much of the work is thankless. Much troubleshooting has to do with in-house servers and the applications they host. While the largest IT organizations may keep their data centers in-house, much of this computing is now handled by private clouds which changes how things are managed. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), meanwhile, will in the coming years adopt more cloud services such as . Let s face it, how many SMBs want to install, manage, maintain and upgrade Exchange servers when mail is far more easily dealt with in the cloud? Likewise, security tools are also moving to the cloud, making it easier to manage whether it is hosted in-house or in the cloud. As these server applications move to the cloud, there may well be far less troubleshooting for IT - but there will be more emphasis on choosing the right hosting partner, picking new applications, and looking for ways to provide strategic value. FOLLOW US & SHARE IT Admins: Master the cloud and boost your career. 4

5 The IT stress factory Doing IT the old way is not only inefficient, it is highly stressful. This year GFI Software commissioned an independent, blind survey of 200 US-based IT administrators and the results were shocking 1. A full 77 percent of those surveyed consider their job stressful. They are also logging long hours, as 23 percent are working between eight and 12 hours of unpaid overtime each week, the survey found. 1 FOLLOW US & SHARE IT Admins: Master the cloud and boost your career. 5

6 Get ahead of the cloud curve One answer to that stress is to move many IT infrastructure tasks to the cloud. And soon this may no longer be just an option, but a requirement pressed by upper management. Wouldn t you rather be the one to drive this change? The cloud is clearly no longer hype, but is very real -- too real for IT pros to ignore. Cloud startups are all the rage. Meanwhile, when was the last time you heard of a startup focused on on-premises software? According to research house IDC, IT services run in the public cloud is a $47.4 billion market today, and will more than double to $107 billion by This compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.5 percent is some five times that of the overall IT industry. And cloud traffic is growing even faster. A Cisco analysis found cloud traffic growing at a CAGR of 35 percent, which is set to quadruple by Cisco predicts that over the next four years cloud traffic will hit 5.3 zettabytes, or in other words, 5.3 billion terabytes! As an IT pro, it makes sense for you to understand this trend, and get ahead of it instead of reacting to it. You can become a thought leader in your company by identifying what apps, tools and services best belong in the cloud now, and crafting an effective migration strategy. Don t just become an expert in cloud technology, but cloud economics as well: How does Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) change in the cloud? More importantly, what is the ROI of cloud services that reduce the need for IT labor and infrastructure? And most important, what are the opportunities to gain competitive advantage when IT is no longer bogged down with grunt work, but has the time to think strategically? Three applications stand out in terms of current demand, found CompTIA, an organization that supports the partner community. As cloud components are becoming more prevalent in IT architectures, more companies are relying on cloud computing for business processes such as storage (59 percent), business continuity/disaster recovery (48 percent), and security (44 percent), CompTIA research found. A Cisco analysis found cloud traffic growing at a CAGR of 35 percent, which is set to quadruple by 2017 A report by research firm Research and Markets explains why cloud storage and backup are in such demand. Emergence of innovative storage technologies such as inline data deduplication, inline IT Admins: Master the cloud and boost your career 5 compression, WAN optimization, cloud based security solutions and storage gateways are pushing the growth of the cloud storage market. SMBs are rapidly adopting cloud based storage services to reduce cost and IT complexity compared to large enterprises, thereby pushing the market growth, the research house said. The small and medium business segments are the major adopter of cloud storage services and this trend is expected to continue for next few years. FOLLOW US & SHARE IT Admins: Master the cloud and boost your career. 6

7 The changing role of IT Since the cloud is too big and growing too fast to turn your back on, do your career a favor and become a cloud advocate in your shop. This could in fact be the best thing that ever happened to your career. Many IT pros are pushing in this direction, and it is already paying off. A report from 451 Research, sponsored by Microsoft, found that the cloud supports new ways of doing business: 52 percent of respondents believe the cloud is driving new and realigned business strategies. The study clearly shows a strong customer preference for full-service hosting solutions over the next two years, with substantial investment increases in security services, database and shared servers, backup and recovery, and managed hosted desktop. As this market matures, customers are selecting hosting providers based on trust and their ability to grow with customers future businesses, said the 451 report. Cloud services are revolutionizing the role of IT, finds Nemertes Research. Now companies are less concerned with IT, and more concerned with what Nemertes calls Enterprise Technology (ET). ET is where low-level IT functions are performed in the cloud. Not only does this shift change the way business leaders view IT, it also alters the organizational structure of IT itself, Nemertes found. In the ET world, the technology team becomes more strategic, and as a result, it relies more heavily on trusted partners to handle tactical functions and in some cases, assist in strategic direction of the company, Nemertes said. The research company suggests that by leveraging relationships with vendor partners, IT organizations can turn things around and advises that they first identify the nonstrategic, keep the lights on IT functions and then determine which functions they will entrust with a partner. FOLLOW US & SHARE IT Admins: Master the cloud and boost your career. 7

8 Scoring some serious skills In years past, an easy route to IT admin success was to go to classes, and pick up a certification or two (or far more for true IT vets). Microsoft in particular was effective at training its user base this way. Certifications are still valuable, and many of Microsoft s current training programs are aimed at the cloud. But the cloud is moving so fast, certifications aren t the only answer. Driving home this point is the fact that the cloud is almost infinitely varied. The good news is the cloud should be far easier to master than, say, managing an on-premises SQL Server environment. The trick here is to identify your organization s needs, and become expert in those. Maybe backup is the big nemesis. Perhaps you work for an engineering company that wants to offload rendering and simulation to the cloud. It could be you find it increasingly hard to know what is in your organization, or your troubleshooting system is cumbersome. Or your security is deficient and you are seeking better protection that is easier to manage and encompasses headquarters as well as remote workers and offices. No matter what industry your business is in, cloud, in one of its many guises, will become your responsibility. Learn about your industry trends, find out about best practice from other industries and use knowledge of your specific business needs to choose the right cloud technology. the cloud is almost infinitely varied FOLLOW US & SHARE IT Admins: Master the cloud and boost your career. 8

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