Today I am going to touch on a very important topic which I believe is very crucial for all the IT professionals (people who are working in the industry or students who would be entering the industry within the next year). The current economic scenario coupled with fears of slowdown in IT across the world and US shifting its focus from outsourcing might be giving today's IT professionals and students sleepless nights.
Students who joined IT just to make sure they have a secure future should be cursing their destiny as this seems to be the worst time in the IT industry after the 2000 'IT bubble fiasco'. Company's laying off people, big corporates declaring to stop the hiring process, recruitments coming to a standstill form almost all HR consultants. Sounds scary!!! Well this is the truth and we all have to face it.
But as they say 'Every dark night has a silver lining to it' - (forgive me but i was a bit carried away by the quote and somehow thought of using it in atleast one of my post... :P ), similarly this scenario has also brought in a new opportunity for everybody. I can reflect on atleast one opportunity that i believe should be tapped by all the students who will be entering the IT industry by the end of year 2009.
My emphasis is on getting 'Training in Open source Technologies' - Funny it may sound to many of you and questions such as 'who uses open source', 'is there a demand of human resource', 'as its free its not challenging enough for me' and similar questions. Adopting a very rational approach, I can give out certain points that i believe should atleast make you consider open source as an option for your career.
1. Current economic scenario pushes different verticals (business such as pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, trading etc.) to cut costs in IT expenditure. Since they cannot totally rule out IT spending they will divert their funds on technologies that a. Does not have a licensing costs attached to it b. Has regular upgrades available and community support (so that they dont have to depend on just one vendor)
2. This will create more demand for open source technologies and more and more vendors will shift their focus to open source. Since there is a heavy crunch for open source professionals around the world, they would definitely be well paid as compared to their counterparts who are working in 'licensing technologies'.
3. Students who have already worked in open source technologies or are undergoing a training in open source technologies should benefit the most as they would be the first to get recruited by any IT company.
4. Open source jobs would also be created in businesses who will purchase open source solutions since they will be needing an in-house Open source individual who would be looking after their IT infrastructure.
Some of the upcoming open source technologies that you can consider working on:
1. Servers Managemnet - Linux - Linux Administration, Server handling, remote server maintenance
2. Website Development - PHP, Drupal, Django, Phython, Ruby on Rails, Joomla, PHP DotNetNuke
3. Application Development - Ruby on Rails, Ruby
4. ERP - Compiere, openERP, xTuple
But after all this, I do believe there is a big question that should be lingering in your mind, Is open source the future? What if the economy takes a U turn and is back on track, would open source become extinct.
The answer is a big 'NO'. Open Source makes organizations lean and cuts down their IT spending. The current economic scenario will make the corporates cut their operating costs (ongoing costs) and that is where licensing technologies would be challenged at. Plus open source has many benefits that it is very difficult not to mention those in my posts. There are:
1. Community Support - Open source is usually backed by a large community
2. Documentation - Since its not controlled, all the documentation related to the code would be provided
3. Customizable - If you find that a particular software is not working according to your requirements, you can change the code and make it work according to you.