10 IT Skills That Are Becoming Obsolete

One of the givens of working in IT is that the pace of technology changes rapidly, and so too, do the skills that are needed to stay current. Here are 10 that John Hales, a VMware instructor at Global Knowledge says are going away:

1. Windows XP/2003 and earlier. Why? Mainly because the operating systems are reaching their end of life and won’t be supported/updated by Microsoft any longer. Also, new applications no longer support them.

2. Silverlight. This was Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Flash and it can’t be used with the new Windows Store (metro) apps or on a Windows phone.

3. Adobe Flash.  After Adobe stopped supporting mobile platforms in 2011, more websites started moving to HTML 5, which works on mobile and desktop Oss. While there is still demand for Flash, Hale thinks it has peaked.

4. COBOL, FORTRAN and other mainframe languages. Although they were popular and commonly used for years, the majority of programming work has transitioned to modern, object-oriented languages like ObjectiveC, Java, C++ and C#.

5. Lotus Notes administrator. Once one of the three big platforms, now more people are moving to hosting email in the cloud or using free platforms like Gmail.

6. Novell GroupWise administrator. Marketshare for GroupWise appears to be rather small in most industries, Hale believes.

7. Traditional telephony.  Use of PBXs is declining as more and more companies are switching to mobile platforms, VoIP-enabled phones and collaborative communications platforms like Microsoft Lync.

8. Server-only admin skills. Virtualization is becoming more ubiquitous and fewer physical servers are being deployed, meaning there are fewer to set up and configure.

9. Help desk technicians/level 1 support. There is less demand for help desk skills as they are mainly outsourced to other companies and also off-shore.

10. PC repair techs. Demand for this skill set is decreasing, although it is not going away. However, tablets are being used more frequently in place of PCs and laptops, and there is very little that needs to be fixed in a tablet.

What do you think--do you agree with these choices? Are there others that should be on the list?

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