Kiss your IT geeks goodbye.

If you read tech news regularly, you will know that “The Cloud” is the next great destination for all of your treasured computer files.
If you are unsure what it is I will put it in simple terms here.
Basically, you put your files into a network of computers, rather than one single location, so that the data and applications can then be accessed remotely when you need it. When you here the term “The Cloud”, it actually refers to the internet.

This provides an immense amount of benefits, especially to businesses, as it means their data is securely held offsite from their physical offices. All the data is on a convenient, on-demand network, with access to a shared pool of computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released.
And soon, nearly anyone will be able to handle the uploads and downloads with infinite ease!
This is awesome and shows that we are living on the edge of a marvelous new future.

But I think we should stop and ask ourselves one question:
“What is to become of our Sys Admins and IT Managers?”

In the future, when we are all cloud computing and loving our lives, where will these people be?
If you don’t need them to help maintain server storage, find archived data files and make recommendations on what new hardware you need for the office, then what happens to them?

If these hardworking individuals are not needed to defrag a drive or resurrect a server, where will they fit in modern society?

Well, I will tell you – They will form roaming mobile LAN parties and create confusion on the streets by speaking l33t or Klingon to innocent pedestrians.

But we have a chance to stop this horrific vision of the future from coming true.
And it is such a very simple solution.
(No, it does not involve boycotting cloud computing or storage, because that stuff is going to be f#@king fantastic!)

The solution is this :
Tomorrow, when you see someone who works in IT, just walk up and give them a hug.
Keep in mind that you will need to hold on, so they know it is for real. About 15 seconds will be enough.

Sure, they may flinch now, but if we don’t start to heal the rift BEFORE it begins, then all is lost……..