The following blog post was written by Avanade alum Glenn Gutmacher.

Recently, I ran across an old article from last year by David Gewirtz at ZDNet entitled, ”10 Smart Ways to Survive the Coming IT Jobpocalypse”. The article talks about how technology such as cloud computing can disrupt the IT Industry job market and put folks at risk. Gewirtz gives a lot of advice about how IT professionals can strengthen their careers in the face of these technology shifts. Here’s my take on some of his advice as technology continues to change at such a rapid pace.

Chances are that most IT professionals are managing increasingly complex IT solution projects at major enterprise shops where they have highly heterogeneous technical environments with a mix of products by Microsoft and other technology vendors. As Gewirtz implies throughout his post, IT professionals don’t have time to learn everything, but they should be somewhat aware of leading competitive products that have long-term viability. That way, when someone is diagnosing, say, some thorny infrastructure virtualization situation, the VMware components don’t derail them.

At the same time, IT professionals should not ignore leading products on a platform not invented by that company.  For example, anyone doing Microsoft SharePoint or .NET application development should know about Sitrion, and anyone doing content management in a .NET environment should know about Sitecore.

As Gewirtz said, it’s not hard to learn some basic programming around a given topic.  So do it for the areas that relate to things you’re likely to come up against, in addition to core tech certifications. At Avanade, our employees benefit from a corporate policy that will pay for relevant training. If your company is the same way, take advantage of it!

Beyond staying up to speed on products and certifications, Gerwitz offers some great recommendations about leveraging LinkedIn and Twitter.  If you want potential employers to find you – and you to find “hidden” opportunities - increasing your visibility and activity on those networks is suggested.  It complements joining more technical groups (such as MSDN and StackOverflow) where you probably benefit from the articles and Q&A already, and they’re also free.

Finally, I can’t echo his point around learning cloud systems more loudly.  You wouldn’t believe how much business is coming down the enterprise pike thanks to public, private and hybrid cloud – and a whole bunch of stuff yet to be envisioned. For example, there’s been huge demand among Avanade’s customers to provide Sitecore-based platforms running on Windows Azure public cloud, which was probably not top-of-mind when Sitecore was founded! (Read about the latest cloud trends on the Avanade Insights Blog.)

It’s definitely an exciting time in the technology market and IT professionals have more opportunity – and greater responsibility – to develop skills in these new areas. I urge you to check out all the available technology jobs at Avanade.