Microsoft Online Services

I've been at TechReady all this week. This is the Microsoft internal technical readiness conference. It's a great chance to meet up with other Microsoft employees and to hear about the latest going ons. I've been a few sessions on the Online Services offering and futures. http://www.microsoft.com/online/default.mspx . Lots of good stuff. Last night I had dinner with other MS employees from Poland, Russia, and Canada. In the 5+ years I've been with Microsoft this is an experience I've had many times yet, it's always a bit humbling. The truth is there are not many organizations where such a collection of diverse individuals from all over the world get to interact.

The Online services will give you the ability to host your data, email, portal needs, etc to a Microsoft managed service. As business's begin to engage in this online model, the IT industry will surely change. Traditionally over the years, the role of the IT person has been to manage, update, maintain, troubleshoot, and administer the software infrastructure. As we move into the online world, this role will be more business focused then 'techno-mechanico'. Lets call this new role, the IT Business Admin. Also developers will shift to the added value role as opposed to building out complete solutions. Developers will need a breadth of knowledge to bridge together different services to enable additional business needs. I think the next 5-10 yrs will have big changes for how companies manage IT needs as well as the traditional technology roles. Compare to the auto industry, there was a time when if you owned a car, you were part mechanic. Today, few have the knowledge to work on their own cars and high schools don't offer the vocational training for automechanics any more.