high demand IT fields currently?

[BlahBlahYouToo]

VDI or anything VMware related.

yup, good call. forgot to list VM and security.

 

[spidey07]

I can't think of anyone in their right mind who would use Exchange for something like this. It's not what it's made for. Different tools for different jobs.

Yep. Want to kill exchange? Throw 10s of thousands of mailboxes on a few servers and have it only do e-mail. That's not what it's for.

 

[Kaido]

This:
oracle/sybase SQL DBA

From 1999 to now this has been hottest and most lucrative of them all. Sometimes I wish I would have gotten in this field I would have retired by now if i wanted.

Huge in my area as well (Hartford - insurance capital). Lots and lots of job postings for those when I last checked.

 

[alkemyst]

Networking is still super hot, simply can't find good qualified people, it's impossible.

True VMWare architects (and there aren't many of them) make bank as do real data center architects who can merge networking and SAN to merged fabrics/networks.

Overall the entire IT field is exploding for true experts in their area. Demand is really high and supply is extremely low = money.

QFT....on the networking. I am doing a tech interview monday for a junior position, my CCNA is about 3 years old and I don't work with it at all.

The key thing is most are looking for people they can grow. That's one thing I can offer, I can tear up technologies once they are in front of me.

Virtualization is big...VMWare and the like, storage etc.

The company I am going to interview was bought out by a larger one. Since 2000 it experienced 40% growth per year every year except one.

That year it grew ONLY 20%.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Also certain healthcare specialties, like PACS and EMR.

 

[rasczak]

thanks for asking this question, i'm currently trying to figure out which direction i really want to take and this helps out quite a bit.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

FWIW imo pretty much all IT related jobs are in demand right now. I don't believe I have any 'qualified' IT friends who are still looking for work - from sys admin to db stuff.

 

[freegeeks]

The situation is very similar in Belgium, I'm a freelance network admin / consultant and I can pick and choose my jobs. My golden egg is my knowledge of Alcatel-Lucent Timos platform + Cisco. The Timos platform has grown very big in service providers networks but there are simply not a lot of people that have experience with it. More and more providers use Cisco on CE and Alcatel SR on the PE for mpls networks. I have at least 2-3 emails a week with job offers and a lot of them have to do with this. Combined with my 10+ years of experience and I would say that there has never been a better time being freelance (at least in Belgium). There is a global shortage of IT people here in general, enrollment in IT courses in higher education are down more then 70% compared with 10 years ago!!!! Apparantly everyone wants to become a laywer if I see the statistics

 

[IndyColtsFan]

From my experience, its just the opposite.

When I was working for an internet service provider in North Houston back in 2001 - 2003, our exchange server would crash at least once a month. We finally had to go with red hat linux and either postfix or sendmail. We had about 15,000 active cable modem subscribers, and maybe 40,000 - 50,000 email addresses.

Your Exchange server probably had a hardware issue or a configuration issue. In my 10+ years of working directly with Exchange in a corporate environment, I can count on one hand the number of times it went down. A proper, mission-critical Exchange configuration would be clustered so outages should be extremely rare.

Maybe with companies that have dedicated exchange admins / engineers, but I have seen a lot of internet service providers that dropped exchange in favor of a *nix based solution.

An ISP providing email services to its clientele isn't remotely close to a corporate environment. Corporate email environments are mission critical and provide a variety of services, such as VOIP integration, mobile device integration, email archiving functionality (legal requirements), etc. An ISP does not have to deal with that level of service. Providing a POP account is a far cry from the fully-integrated client experience of Outlook + Exchange.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Your Exchange server probably had a hardware issue or a configuration issue. In my 10+ years of working directly with Exchange in a corporate environment, I can count on one hand the number of times it went down. A proper, mission-critical Exchange configuration would be clustered so outages should be extremely rare.



An ISP providing email services to its clientele isn't remotely close to a corporate environment. Corporate email environments are mission critical and provide a variety of services, such as VOIP integration, mobile device integration, email archiving functionality (legal requirements), etc. An ISP does not have to deal with that level of service. Providing a POP account is a far cry from the fully-integrated client experience of Outlook + Exchange.

In my experience exchange is great for less than a few thousand users as long as you have a halfway competent sys admin.


Once you start hitting a couple thousand exchange mailboxes you really need to have a dedicated exchange admin that knows WTF they're doing, as proper system setup becomes extremely critical.

And if you're just hosting a bunch of pop and imap accounts doing nothing complicated then exchange is not the logical solution anyway.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

In my experience exchange is great for less than a few thousand users as long as you have a halfway competent sys admin.

Once you start hitting a couple thousand exchange mailboxes you really need to have a dedicated exchange admin that knows WTF they're doing, as proper system setup becomes extremely critical.

And if you're just hosting a bunch of pop and imap accounts doing nothing complicated then exchange is not the logical solution anyway.

This x 1000.

 

[CVSiN]

Your Exchange server probably had a hardware issue or a configuration issue. In my 10+ years of working directly with Exchange in a corporate environment, I can count on one hand the number of times it went down. A proper, mission-critical Exchange configuration would be clustered so outages should be extremely rare.



An ISP providing email services to its clientele isn't remotely close to a corporate environment. Corporate email environments are mission critical and provide a variety of services, such as VOIP integration, mobile device integration, email archiving functionality (legal requirements), etc. An ISP does not have to deal with that level of service. Providing a POP account is a far cry from the fully-integrated client experience of Outlook + Exchange.

Exactly what I was saying..
thank you for putting it better than I could..

 

[freegeeks]

who is using exchange in an ISP environment anyway, sendmail or postfix ftw as an smtp server

 

[Texashiker]

Your Exchange server probably had a hardware issue or a configuration issue.

From what I was told, it was a design flaw in exchange - where all of the emails are stored in 1 large database. Unlike sendmail where each persons email is stored in their own inbox and separate from the everyone elses.

When the exchange database became corrupted (which was often), the database had to be restored from backup, or deleted.

If exchange has to have a dedicated admin for a few thousand users, that does not say a lot. I can think of lots of software that can have 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k, users and not need a dedicated sys admin.

But like tools software has certain target niches. Where sendmail handles massive amounts of plain email fine, exchange might handle other stuff better.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

From what I was told, it was a design flaw in exchange - where all of the emails are stored in 1 large database. Unlike sendmail where each persons email is stored in their own inbox and separate from the everyone elses.

That isn't a "design flaw" -- that is the way Exchange is designed in order to take advantage of concepts such as single-instance storage, for example. You can realize substantial savings in resources using this methodology.

Additionally you can segment out mailboxes into different databases using the concepts of information stores and storage groups. You'll have to forgive me, as it has been quite awhile since I've done hands-on work with Exchange so my memory is a little foggy in this area of the terminology and I don't have time to refresh it now.

When the exchange database became corrupted (which was often), the database had to be restored from backup, or deleted.

If you performed brick-level backups, you didn't have to restore the entire DB necessarily. Also, MS has several utilities which do a great job on database maintenance and support. Speaking of support, I've always found Microsoft's technical support to be top notch.

If exchange has to have a dedicated admin for a few thousand users, that does not say a lot. I can think of lots of software that can have 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k, users and not need a dedicated sys admin.

You're not getting the point. Exchange does much more than provide a simple email box. Of course you'd never use it for an ISP -- it would be overkill and way too expensive when all you need is to provide simple POP/IMAP access and an SMTP gateway. When you're in a corporate environment, however, you need the bells and whistles of Exchange along with Microsoft to back the product up. The only other real alternative is Lotus Notes, and as I was also a Lotus Notes admin for several years, I can tell you that Exchange is better.

 

[CVSiN]

Chevron employs 67k+ employees world wide..
All Exchange servers for them are based here in Houston.
That number only includes employees not vanity boxes or dept boxes or anything else.

They have no problem with Exchange supporting huge numbers of people and a message load that is more than some smaller countries.

It all comes down to maintenance.. proper deployment and architecture of the clusters and database maintenance and health.

I have seen DB corruptions even on the LINUX mail side with CommuniGate and other LINUX mail as well yes with the flat file system it can be easier to fix but still a major hassle, and both required ALOT more maintenance for LESS function in a Corp environment.

Both have their places.. when you tie in AD, VOIP, Instant Messaging and mobile phones (BES and Androids) you really need Exchange. so that need is not going any where.

most companies are running MS for AD, Office, Server OS, Client OS and now Sharepoint as well. it only makes sense to use the Mail server with the most tie in and function.

 

[classy]

Right now, anything VMware would have to be at the top of the list. Indy listed Sharepoint and that is also a nice feather in the cap to have. But I don't know anyone worth anything not employed though.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Right now, anything VMware would have to be at the top of the list. Indy listed Sharepoint and that is also a nice feather in the cap to have. But I don't know anyone worth anything not employed though.

I made the switch from VMWare (and other server technologies) to Sharepoint and I kind of wish I could go back to VMWare.

 

[her209]

ERP software earns you the most buck

 

[spidey07]

I made the switch from VMWare (and other server technologies) to Sharepoint and I kind of wish I could go back to VMWare.

It's not hard, and there is a severe lack of people that actually know it properly and can build scalable best practice solutions. I think we bill our VMWare guy out at like 300+ an hour. 15,000 will get you a weeks worth of his time.

 

[alfa147x]

So question:

Right now I'm an Information Systems major with an ERP emphasis
I plan on getting some sort of SAP Certification before I graduate + the terp10 certification

My job currently will be introducing me to MS SQL. I'v never used it but I'm interested.

Questions:
1) ERP + SQL = good?
2) Are there any good certifications I can get in SQL?
3) What would you do with the given attributes?

Thanks!

Probably should get some cert in Oracle

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

So question:

Right now I'm an Information Systems major with an ERP emphasis
I plan on getting some sort of SAP Certification before I graduate + the terp10 certification

My job currently will be introducing me to MS SQL. I'v never used it but I'm interested.

Questions:
1) ERP + SQL = good?
2) Are there any good certifications I can get in SQL?
3) What would you do with the given attributes?

Thanks!

IT is dead. the bubble burst long time ago.
I suggest u switch majors asap.

 

[MiniDoom]

IT is dead. the bubble burst long time ago.
I suggest u switch majors asap.

yeah, you're right. everyone i know switched back to pen and paper.

 

[alfa147x]

It's not hard, and there is a severe lack of people that actually know it properly and can build scalable best practice solutions. I think we bill our VMWare guy out at like 300+ an hour. 15,000 will get you a weeks worth of his time.

Holy shit.

 

[spidey07]

Holy shit.

Professional services/consulting is where the money is at if you can become a true expert in one of these fields. We can't find strong candidates in the networking or VMware area and as such those experts demand a very pretty penny.