Video, music, classified ads, newspapers, magazines, pictures \u2013 all forms of media have been dramatically transformed by their digitization. iTunes, Amazon and all of their various devices have enabled a new business model that created fantastic wealth at the expense of old-guard leaders. This digital transformation was an onslaught that decimated local newspapers, record stores, film production, magazines and many more.<\/p>\n
IT professionals claim they dodged this. In fact, they claim they benefit from this. All of this digitization will call for more and more of their expertise. As everyone digitizes everything, the world needs more servers, more storage, more memory, more connectivity, more software and more people who can make it all work.<\/p>\n
But I can imagine now a discussion in the decimated old-guard leaders of the newspaper industry.\u00a0 \u201cThe ever-growing and aging population will consume ever-increasing quantities of news,\u201d they say. They were right that more and more people wanted to consume more and more news content. But they completely missed that it wouldn\u2019t be in print. It would be in a new form–one they didn\u2019t anticipate and that came on faster than they predicted.\u00a0 Hence, they failed to exist. Their newspaper had been virtualized.<\/em><\/p>\n IT professionals are right that there will be an ever-increasing demand for digital content.\u00a0 But they are wrong to assume that means their skills will remain relevant as that happens.\u00a0 In fact, I predict that many of the IT skills currently in demand will experience a similar trend as those who ran printing presses in the 80s for those same old-guard newspapers.<\/p>\n Why do I think this?\u00a0 Because the same thing that happened to newspapers is happening to IT equipment. Servers, storage and networks are all being virtualized<\/em> – which is exactly what a digital version of a newspaper is.\u00a0 It\u2019s a virtual newspaper<\/em>.\u00a0 And what happens when you virtualize<\/em> something?\u00a0 That metamorphosis results in a transformational change.\u00a0 Transformation is both highly creative but also very destructive.\u00a0 Once something is virtualized,<\/em> it can be instantly transported across the globe, instantly searchable, modifiable by software so it can be customized, along with a plethora of other traits.\u00a0 Those traits add so much value it makes the physical rendition completely obsolete.<\/p>\n Virtualizing a server is essentially digitizing the server hardware. I don\u2019t see any reason why that won\u2019t be as transformational to the IT industry as virtualizing a newspaper was to newspapers or virtualizing photos was to Kodak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Video, music, classified ads, newspapers, magazines, pictures \u2013 all forms of media have been dramatically transformed by their digitization. iTunes, Amazon and all of their various devices have enabled a new business model that created fantastic wealth at the expense of old-guard leaders. This digital transformation was an onslaught that decimated local newspapers, record stores, film production, magazines and many more. IT professionals claim they dodged this. In fact, they claim they benefit from this. All of this digitization will call for more and more of their expertise. As everyone digitizes everything, the world needs more servers, more storage, more memory, more connectivity, more software and more people who can make it all work. But I can imagine now a discussion in the decimated old-guard leaders of the newspaper industry.\u00a0 \u201cThe ever-growing and aging population will consume ever-increasing quantities of news,\u201d they say. They were right that more and more people wanted to consume more and more news content. But they completely missed that it wouldn\u2019t be in print. It would be in a new form–one they didn\u2019t anticipate and that came on faster than they predicted.\u00a0 Hence, they failed to exist. Their newspaper had been virtualized. IT professionals are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"other_category":[],"class_list":["post-1742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n