In our industry, I think it’s very important to be ahead of the curve when it comes to trends in technology. In the same way as an investor is successful by jumping on a trend early, IT career professionals need to do the same in order to stay relevant and not be left behind
Linux and Open Source Software:
Linux has become huge in the last several years. When I started seeing Microsoft change its tune and embrace Linux back in 2015. I knew that there was going to be a huge change.
Almost every product from the data center to the public cloud runs Linux. For those who come from a Windows world, I would highly recommend at least having some basic understanding of Linux.
Linux adoption opened the door for open-source software. Not just home users, hobbyists, or hackers are adopting open-source software but mainly enterprise organizations are as well.
With no worries of vendor lock-in or licensing costs has appealed to a lot of people to make the move.
Containers (Docker & Kubernetes):
Containers have been around for a while but they are still a relatively new phenomenon for most enterprises. Unless you were in a software shop it’s not likely your organization has embraced containers but that is starting to change.
In my opinion, container adoption in 2021 is where VMware adoption was back in 2005. At that time the early adopters of VMware were more cutting edge organizations that understood the technology and were willing to jump in.
Containers for software developers are great because they allow for software isolation and provide a very clean and predictable environment.
Most organizations are still figuring out their container strategy and how to migrate their older more monolithic applications to containers.
So skills in Containers will become more and more necessary as organizations begin to adopt containers.
Microservices:
Microservices are somewhat new and are very popular with software developers because they break up a larger application into smaller units called microservices.
These smaller microservices allow a team of developers to independently work on a specific microservice. Each microservice has a very specific task and can be coded in a different programming language to fit a specific use case.
Microservices also allow developers to scale and update individual software components much easier than you could with traditional monolithic applications.
Building microservice applications allows organizations to adopt an agile deployment model.
Infrastructure as Code (IoC)
Infrastructure as Code or IoC is the process of using software readable configuration files like JSON or YAML to define and program the individual compute and network elements.
What makes IoC so powerful is that your entire infrastructure is consistent across all devices based on your configuration. This prevents configuration drift which is the cause of most IT-related issues.
The growth of public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google really accelerated the growth of Infrastructure as Code by the use of their vendor-specific tools to rapidly deploy resources in the cloud.
DevOps and CI/CD
DevOps has taken the world by storm for the last several years. DevOps is a process or methodology that is changing how organizations deliver IT-related services to their users or customers.
DevOps’s main goal was to break down the walls of bureaucracy and make IT function more as a single team and less like individual silos. DevOps started because a lot of organizations dealt with the challenge of Shadow IT because IT couldn’t stand out of their own way.
Today organizations are starting to see the financial impact of DevOps when compared to the traditional way of doing things.
In the end, DevOps means a lot of things to different people but the main goal is to get the IT Operations Team, Developers, Project Managers, and Leadership under the same team and allow them to work better together in delivering software and services to customers.
REST APIs
In the last few years, APIs have become all the rage but APIs aren’t exactly new. In the past, most APIs tended to be proprietary and fairly complex to implement. With the introduction of REST APIs, there is now a more common standard of lightweight APIs that leverages HTTP protocol.
REST APIs are what everyone is adopting from Web Services, Applications, websites, and IT Infrastructure. This opens up the door for automation and integration between different systems that share the ability to communicate using REST.
REST APIs are a big part of what makes programmability and more and more vendors are supporting REST which allows you to perform any task that is available in the CLI or GUI and can now be scripted which is at its core what programmability means.
Conclusion
These are all trends that are still in their infancy for the most part but will be a big part of what shapes IT in the 2020s. If I were to pick one to start with that is foundational and will have the biggest impact in these areas but other hot topics like cybersecurity would be learning Linux. I think Linux is a great place to start because so many of the topics I mentioned above are easier if you have a basic understanding of Linux. With that said, I hope you found this helpful. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts.
