[www.computerworld.com]

Gartner: Half of U.S. IT operations jobs to vanish in 20 years
Predicts improvements in data center technologies will lead to job cuts

News Story by Patrick Thibodeau

DECEMBER 01, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) – LAS VEGAS — In an eyebrow-raising forecast, Gartner Inc. researchers said they believe that as many as 50% of the IT operational jobs in the U.S. could disappear over the next two decades because of improvements in data center technologies.

Donna Scott, a Gartner analyst, said IT workers face a situation similar to that in the manufacturing field, which has lost jobs over the past several decades as automation has improved. Similarly, standardization of IT infrastructure, applications and processes will lead to productivity improvements and a major shift in skill needs, she said.

…one wonders if this will lead to the IT-media inventing some apt but awkward term like lattÉizing of network, provisioning and file servers, where middle-class rebels rise up and take Starbucks-fuelled vengance against the man, and (of course) the machine.

This term would be modelled after sabotage performed by saboteurs who lobbed their sabots (clogs) into the machinery that sought to replace them.

Alas, they’ll probably stick with a more mundane and less ironic term, such as Luddite, Vandal, Terrorist, Wrecker, or “radical insource-focused business-re-engineering thought leader”.