Over the past 30 years, IT workers have built and maintained a pretty significant part of human history that really tends to get overlooked and underappreciated. Wifi connections have become commonplace. “Always on” Internet connections are now as much a daily requirement as eating food. And, as we Google over lunch, there’s a huge force working in the background to provide as close to 100% availability as possible.

While each single IT worker is just a speck in the crowd, together, over time, the mass of IT has been very industrious. The Chinese has their Great Wall, and when it comes right down to it, IT’s accomplishments over the past 30 years are just as significant. Maybe you can’t see our IT infrastructure from space (a misnomer about the Great Wall, btw), but it is a substantial part of human history and a huge accomplishment that has taken decades to build.

So…the Great Wall is now just a monument, showing how industrious the Chinese people were. There’s a lot about the Great Wall that we could go into, but this blog post isn’t really about the Great Wall. It’s really about how management of our IT infrastructure is changing. Some stats show that the IT workforce in the U.S. is aging, with no recovery in sight from the younger generations. In short, the youth are not interested in IT anymore. Their interests are elsewhere. If it turns out that there is no recovery for IT, then the IT infrastructure may someday become our monument – our testimony to a most industrious time in human history.

I ask you: is it technology to the rescue once again? And if yes, what is likely to be the technology that can help IT continue to deliver 100% availability in the face of an aging IT workforce? And, then, what will our technology infrastructure look like in 5 years? 10 years?

Our friends over at myITforum.com are hosting a poll about this topic for the next month or so. We’d appreciate it if you would participate in it, giving us your feedback on this topic. Once the poll is over, we’ll circle back here for recap and a follow-up blog post.

The poll: http://www.myitforum.com/absolutenm/templates/?a=15991&z=120