On September 14, 2012 ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick published Why IT is a Profession in Flux, a short article in which he makes the observation that "IT professionals are under considerable pressure to deliver more value to the business, versus being good at coding and testing and deploying and integrating." I forwarded that article to my list of Usual Suspects (the nearly 40 people who have participated in the podcast over the last 3 years), along with a suggestion that I wanted to put together a panel discussion to further explore the issue. This podcast is the result.

As it happened, three of the people who responded to my query were in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld, as was I, so I seized the rare opportunity for a face to face conversation. The participants are all Oracle ACE Directors, as well as architects:

• Ron Batra, Director of Cloud Computing at AT&T
• Basheer Khan, Founder, President and CEO at Innowave Technology
• Ronald van Luttikhuizen, Managing Partner at Vennster.

The Conversation

• Listen to Part 1
  Future-Proofing: As powerful forces reshape enterprise IT, your IT and software development skills may not be enough.
• Listen to Part 2
  Survival Strategy: Re-tooling one’s skill set to reflect changes in enterprise IT, including the knowledge to steer stakeholders around the hype to what’s truly valuable.
• Listen to Part 3
  Writing on the Wall: Do the technological trends that are shaping enterprise IT pose any threat to basic software development roles? What opportunities do these changes represent?

The entire conversation is also available in video format from the OTN YouTube Channel.

Your Two Cents

What are you doing to future-proof your IT career? Share your thoughts in the comments section.