AI take over massive of IT job that in the past manual and brain work intensive work such as data entry, manipulate data, compile report and reactive, passive job that waiting for service request and then react, and off course majority of repeated work.
From the news headline this year along, we saw Microsoft, Oracle, all announce for the massive layoffs due to digital transformation. In global scale, we got Ericsson to cut 25,000 jobs. In Asia, Cathay Pacific 6,000; Mitsubishi UFJ 10,000 jobs cut. For US specific, we got retailer Macy’s to layoff over 10,000 jobs, close 68 stores. HP Enterprise layoffs 5,000 and make massive shift towards cloud computing. You can get the latest news from various news sources.
Here we look into what type of IT job will eventually complete replaced by AI, topic like this can not be cover all the industries and sector, so we just give few exact example, you may need to apply it into your own scenario and context. AI Ops (Artificial Intelligence operations) will be the term we use here.
Smartphone – do you notice that the modern smartphone come with voice command, Google Maps GPS navigation, mobile banking or mobile business app (by various vendor) etc? In the past required experience driver for travel navigation. Mobile app become prefer way to perform banking routine (so no more need to visit physical bank branches). Online shopping store (by clicking on the smart phone, goods will ship to your doorstep) impact on physical retail store. Shopping mall people will go for shopping walk and eating, but really buying things like book, stationary, or other goods can get it cheaper online? We see significant decline in the physical retail sales (and massive layoff and store close). AI pairing with Big Data, Business Intelligence and e-commerce, web application and internet, digital transform entire world across all industries and sectors. If you still do not notice for the small smartphone what it is capable for, you need to rethink as your job, if you can not value added better than that, you will out of job, it matter for now or near future to come. Above is for generic people at large, using smartphone as the example.
For IT world, IT professional who in the frontier of the change, the impact if you had yet notice or your company is slow in the digital transformation journey (it will come one day, so better be prepare for it) . “Automation”, “Cloud”, “DevOps” just a few word we pick and to explain over here.
In the past, for said Network Operation Center (NOC) , Security Operation Center (SOC) or Datacenter Facility, all is required to hire lot of people just to serve the role for Operator, as the past technology can not “automated” , “correlate” and empowerment user “self services” yet, so need human operator to perform manual routing the task or just to click certain command to let the workflow keep going. With the rise of the IT knowledge for the user, and the modern tool enable for self services, automated trigger for the notification what need to be done, reminder, threshold and proactive monitoring and security blocking in place, the need for operator still need, but decline in the volume. In the past may need 100 operators, but it now days possible rightsizing to said only 2 for redundancy. IT operation management (ITOM) trend toward unified ITOM, consolidated all the tool into single unified system, make it more friendly to manage the whole, compare with the past, required multiple sub system and tool, you can imagine the trend toward automated ITOM will make outsource or internal staffing for those IT service job decline at the fast speed. It is norm and no surprising to saw lot of take over, merging and acquisition business case take place for those industries player.
Compare with the past, the world moving toward cloud computing and infrastructure, make the demand for physical server, network and hardware maintenance personnel drop significantly, due to the fact in the cloud infrastructure, it just a click for provision virtual machine, with cpu, memory, hard disk, and OS required in the virtual world. Physical demand for the entry level and medium system and device drop, as no need physical device and system requirement. IT hardware personnel required transit become software or cloud specialist to remain value added. But the industry total IT jobs drop due to consolidated over to the cloud and manpower intensive operations is slowly replaced by automated clouds operation, which can provide all form of notification, proactive reminder, self services and automated schedule maintenance, backup, update and upgrade.
The streamline Development + Operations impact is huge, under this modern practice, it divide into modern and legacy SDLC practice. In the past, software development is used to be huge group of people working together for the software development lifecycle, moving by stage and phases. You compare with those who success adopted to DevOps, it feature smaller team handing and in charge for micro site and micro services (so to speed up the cycle time), make use of the application container, cloud (for automation, integration and management) and adopted unified application security testing tool (AST), capable to perform all application security testing from IDE secure coding advice, static application security testing for ready project, dynamic application security testing (DAST) for production application, mobile AST for mobile app, software composition analysis (SCA) for audit 3rd party develop module and libraries, vendor application security testing (VAST) to QA/AC 3rd party outsourced vendor develop application and code. In the past, DAST is do by the security people, but under this new trend Dev Ops must work together to deliver application faster in the market. For those who do not possess what the need DevOps required competency, will be replaced very soon by new generation of developer and security people who are DevOps ready. World do not wait for you to change, it keep moving forward, if you do not possess what needed, your business because of the market challenges and required to adapt, it will digital transformation, it just matter you are ready for it or not.
In the past, various IT training we need human to teach. In the modern infrastructure, it it more economic viable and capable to track and measure learning result with the computer based training (CBT), in particular for those well craft commercial computer based training that already transform volume of user for the knowledge transfer and education needs.
E-SPIN being intensive working with various clients across industries for the digital transformation, from the supply, integrate, training and maintenance for those needed modern infrastructure, digital transformation, DevOps , computer based training (CBT) requirements. Feel free to contact E-SPIN for your various changes and challenges, we for sure had something for you to move forward.
