Future of IT people?

I like to hear from firwall.cx community about "cloud computing".
For me, I have some serious concerns regarding cloud computing, I think implementing it will lead to decrease IT related jobs around the world.
If you do a research about cloud computing you will notice that their main goal is to "reduce" IT cost by eliminating IT equipment and IT staff.

For example, if your company decided that they will use Hosted Exchange instead of the one that they already have, this means they don't need a person to take care of that in house exchange.
Hosted Exchange is just an example, more services are being offered on the "cloud".

The way thinks developed in the past decades is kind of directing us to one place: no need for IT staff.

I mean, at the beginning most software and applications was running through CLI, then with IT staff help, vendors brought to us GUIs which made things a lot easier even for people who are not really talented, now they want to provide cloud computing with virtualization to our employers to reduce IT cost (get rid of IT equipment) and start work on their cloud!

It's silly when thinking how the future of IT is to reduce IT staff around the globe.

What can we do now? Shouldn't we send bug info to venders as long as we can find a trick to do the task?
Or never ask for enhancements that makes tasks easier or full automated?

Finally take a look at this article from ZDnet:
blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=3907&tag=trunk;content


Am I sound crazy?

Cheers

Naturally events have ways of adjusting themselves. dont be
surprise new opportunities cloud computing will bring into the IT landscape. we can do little to stop this trend as IT specialist. when one opportunity closed another unexpected opens

Somebody will still need to provide the networks...

Alans to me u don't sound crazy at all. Nice observation. At times i have such feelings.


C0DE - 3

when IT outsourcing emerged, I was of the mind that people like Bishop will starve because people like me are charging 10 times lower in Africa and the jobs are transportable through the Internet. but surprisingly bishops are still alive

That's the key sose - many jobs like call centres, coding, systems support etc are transportable over the internet. But then somebody still has to provide the internet connection to the customer, support the local corporate networks, and implement the firewalls and security to keep all those razor-sharp offshore tech wizards out of our stuff. And that's only the networks. What about the local servers, the user PCs, the cabling etc etc.
Don't forget also that the current vogue for offshoring is simply the bean counters in big companies trying to cut costs by, as you say, using people in other countries who will do the job for less. But as these people do those jobs and become skilled their expectations and lifestyles will rise and their economies will develop until they in turn will also become too expensive. That's why we're already seeing the first wave of popular offshore destinations beginning to fade and new ones coming in. In the long run, by it's very nature, it can't last, and what then?