Advances in the cloud and IT consumerization may mean more flexible, less expensive workforce -- at cost of IT job security 云计算和IT业消费化的进步也许意味着更灵活、更廉价劳动力的产生——但这是以IT行业的安全性为代价的
Cloud computing has given organizations worldwide on-tap access to compute power, storage, and applications, resulting in a huge boost in flexibility coupled with cost savings. A new study foretells that the IT workforce soon may become the next on-tap resource thanks to the cloud, which could mean even greater agility and lower costs for companies -- but it could also hurt job security and breed resentment among tech pros.
云计算已经为世界各地的组织机构提供了数据访问、存储和应用程序,大大提高了灵活性并节省了成本。一项新的研究预言,由于云计算的出现,IT从业者不久将引向数据挖掘,这意味着公司有更大的灵活性和更低的成本——但这同样也会破坏就业保障,还会令行业内滋生很多矛盾。
Commissioned by Dell and Intel, "The Evolving Workforce Report" (part one of a series) aims to identify and explore future trends and themes pertaining to the workplace and workforce, honing in on the role technology plays. As part of that trend -- what the report refers to as "crowdsource services" -- full-time IT departments will be supplemented or replaced by far-flung contract freelancers or teams that are thrown piecemeal projects on-the-fly in JIT (just in time) fashion.
受戴尔公司和英特尔公司的委托,“进化的劳动力报告”(整套的第一部分)旨在鉴定和探究工作场所和从业者的未来趋势和主旋律,进一步发现科技的作用。作为整个趋势的一部分——报告指的是“众包服务”——广大的自由职业者和团队将补充和取代专职的IT部门,他们将像头痛医头脚痛医脚般完成准时制生产任务。
What's more, the traditional nine-to-five schedule with employees working in at computers on their desks, in primarily siloed fashion, will continue to fade away. Instead, workers will have more flexible schedules and able to do their tasks via any number of computing devices at all hours of the day. Employee performance will gauged by output instead of hours logged.
而且,传统朝九晚五的工作时间和办公桌上的电脑工作模式将会逐渐消失。取而代之的是,员工灵活地安排时间,并且能随时通过许多计算设备完成工作。员工的表现将由表现而不是时间来评估。
There are potential benefits to this evolution, the report notes, such as the aforementioned boost in flexibility, coupled with a reduction in costs. In theory, organizations will be able to assign projects on an as-needed basis to the ideal worker. For example, a company with branches spread worldwide could rapidly pinpoint and contract the perfect candidates to address a support desk problem for a remote office in Denver, a security breach in London, or a data center outage in Dubai, without having to keep expensive full-timers on call in those locations. Further, the model enables organizations to rapidly add, say, developers to a meaty project that's falling behind schedule.
报告指出,这种演变有潜在的好处,如前面提到的灵活性提高以及成本的降低。理论上,组织机构可以根据需要给合适的员工分配项目。例如,对于一个在全球范围内有多个分部的公司来说,不用花费高额电话费,就可以迅速找到并联系最佳人员来处理丹佛远程办公室的支持桌面问题、伦敦分部的安全漏洞问题或是迪拜数据库的中断问题。另外,这种模式可以让组织机构快速添加、表明意见,还可以让开发者完成未完成的项目。
Additionally, the evolution means more people -- through crowdsourcing -- can more easily contribute their expertise, potentially on a 24/7 basis as organization recruit workers overseas. "Due to the rise of pervasive ICT and the development of cloud computing, it will be easier to distribute more tasks and services and to invite input from a community through crowdsourcing," the report notes.
另外,这次演变意味着:由于组织机构聘用海外员工,更多的人可以基于全天候服务,通过众包更加容易的贡献他们的专业知识。报告指出:“普及ICT和云计算开发正在增加,因此分配多量任务和服务,通过众包从集团吸引投入将变得更容易。”
The report rightly points out potential drawbacks to this malleable JIT model of the IT workforce. From a technical standpoint, companies will need to figure out how to accommodate the different platforms their employees and contractors might use. There's also the challenge of assigning, tracking, and managing the work from legions of disparate workers.
报告公正的指出了IT劳动力这种有扩展性的JIT模式的潜在缺点。从技术立场,公司需要想出办法,提供员工和承包商要使用的各种平台。另外还要面临着分配、跟踪和管理来自大批不同员工工作的挑战。
Further, the report points to potential security concerns as organizations expose computing resources, data, and projects to more outsiders. Also, IT managers might be pressured to embrace new technologies are a faster pace than they're accustomed to, creating compatibility and security headaches.
此外,报告指出了由于组织机构向其以外的人透露了计算资源、数据和项目而导致的潜在安全问题。另外,IT管理人员要被迫接受新技术比以往更快的速度产生兼容和安全问题。
From an organizational standpoint, IT managers will need to acclimate to forming and managing teams of potential strangers -- at times representing different nationalities and cultures -- charged with working together on a single task, only to be disbanded when the project is complete, the report says. This approach "makes it increasingly difficult for companies to build a unified workforce, sharing common values and goals," the report notes.
报告提出:站在组织的立场上,IT管理者需适应组成和管理有外国人的团队——有时他们代表了不同的国家和文化——在一个任务中协同工作,只有当项目完成时才会解散。这种方法使公司创建团结的劳动力,分享共同的价值观和目标变得越来越难。
This workplace of tomorrow might not bode well for the IT professional in terms of job security, though. As full-time, salaried positions become less prevalent, IT workers could find themselves competing against peers around the world for jobs, according to the report. "Strong resistance is expected from many parts of the labor force in the same way as outsourcing and globalization is seen by many to be damaging," according to the report. "The gap will widen between the best workers and the worst in terms of opportunities and earnings, contributing to greater income inequality and therefore potential social unrest."
报告称,就工作安全而言,未来的工作场所也许预示着IT专业人员不好的前景。由于全职支薪的职位变得越来越少见,IT工作人员会感觉自己在和全世界同领域的人竞争。许多劳动者会有强烈反抗,在他们看来,外包和全球化在损害他们的利益。从机遇和收入来看,优秀员工与最差员工的差距将会拉大,造成巨大的收入差异,由此引发社会动荡。
Advances in cloud computing, mobile computing, and collaboration tools continue to represent the double-edged sword of the Internet age. In the ideal world, these technologies provide organizations with an opportunity to harness the best and brightest minds across the globe, day and night, thus driving innovation faster than ever before. What's more, the potential cost savings are significant, as certain IT-oriented tasks are sensibly outsourced on an contract, as-needed basis.
云计算、移动计算和协作工具的进步仍是互联网时代的一把双刃剑。在理想世界中,这些技术为组织机构提供机会,让他们利用全球最好、最聪明的的想法,日复一日,就能以最快的速度推动创新。而且,由于与IT相关的任务都根据合同和需要合理外包,节省了大量成本。
The risk, though, is that CEOs may become too fixated on the purely bottom-line benefits to the point that they view their knowledge workers as just another disposable commodity -- and shop for application developers or network administrators the same way they shop for generic servers. Organizations that choose to simply opt for the cheapest IT labor that money can buy will get precisely what they pay for: workers that have limited incentive to deliver anything more than what's precisely spelled out in the contract of the day. Worst yet, they may find themselves more likely targets of hacking, corporate espionage, and data theft, as their contract employees may be similarly fixated on their own profits over all else. Resentment may also extend to increasingly frustrated advocates of social changes, the likes of which are making their voices heard through the Occupy movement that's swept the nation and beyond.
但是也有风险,CEO会变得过于观众单纯的基本利益,他们把知识型员工仅仅看作是一种一次性商品,然后就像买普通服务器一样购买应用程序开发者和网络管理者。组织机构只选择那些一分钱一分货的最廉价的IT劳动力:员工只有有限的动机履行合同上说明的任务。更糟的是,他们会发现自己更倾向于非法侵入,企业间谍和数据盗取,因为他们的劳务工也是把利润看的比一切都重要。怨恨的情绪还会延伸到日益沮丧的社会变动的倡导者身上,他们通过遍及整个国家或更远的占领运动表达他们的意见。
In that light, corporate leaders will hopefully realize that there are tangible and intangible benefits to recruiting and retaining IT pros with fair wages and rewards, the types of which inspire knowledge workers to fully contribute their skills and knowledge in helping organizations flourish and innovate. Speed alone, after all, doesn't determine which organizations come out ahead; it's the companies that can execute the brightest ideas the fastest.
鉴于这种情况,公司领导人将通过公平的工资和奖励聘请IT专家,激发工作者充分贡献他们的技能和知识,帮助企业繁荣发展和创新,企业将从中得到有形和无形的双重收益。毕竟,仅靠速度不能让某个企业组织崭露头角,执行最高效最智慧的工作方法才是真正的制胜关键。