10 Dying IT Skills
Author: Linda Leung
Introduction
There are some things in life, like good manners, which never go
out of style, and there are other things, like clothing styles that
fall in and out of fashion, but when an IT skill falls out of favor
it rarely ever comes back. Here's our list of 10 dying IT skills.
If any of these skills are your main expertise, perhaps it's time
to update your skill set.
10. COBOL
Is it dead or alive? This 40-year-old programming language often
appears in lists of dying IT skills but it also appears in as many
articles about organizations with legacy applications written in
COBOL having a hard time seeking workers with COBOL skills. IBM
cites statistics that 70% of the world's business data is still
being processed by COBOL applications. But how many of these
applications will remain in COBOL for the long term? Even IBM is
pushing its customers to "build bridges" and use service-oriented
architecture to "transform legacy applications and make them part
of a fast and flexible IT architecture."
9. HTML
We're not suggesting the Internet is dead but with the
proliferation of easy to use WYSIWYG HTML editors enabling
non-techies to set up blogs and Web pages, Web site development is
no longer a black art. Sure, there's still a need for professional
Web developers (see the ColdFusion entry above for a discussion
about Java and PHP skills) but a good grasp of HTML isn't the only
skill required of a Web developer. Professional developers often
have expertise in Java, AJAX, C++ and .Net, among other programming
languages. HTML as a skill lost more than 40% of its value between
2001 and 2003, according to Foote Partners.
8. SNA
The introduction of IP and other Internet networking
technologies into enterprises in the 1990s signaled the demise of
IBM's proprietary Systems Network Architecture. According to
Wikipedia, the protocol is still used extensively in banks and
other financial transaction networks and so SNA skills continue to
appear in job ads. But permanent positions seeking SNA skills are
few and far between. ITJobsWatch.com noted that there were three
opening for permanent jobs between February and April, compared to
43 during the same period last year. Meanwhile, companies such as
HP offer consultants with experience in SNA and other legacy skills
such as OpenVMS and Tru64 Unix for short-term assignments.
7. Siebel
Siebel is one skill that makes a recurring appearance in the
Foote Partners' list of skills that have lost their luster. Siebel
was synonymous with customer relationship management in the late
'90s and early 2000s, and the company dominated the market with a
45% share in 2002. Founded by Thomas Siebel, a former Oracle
executive with no love lost for his past employer, Siebel competed
aggressively with Oracle until 2006 when it was ultimately acquired
by the database giant. Siebel's complex and expensive CRM software
required experts to install and manage. That model lost out to the
new breed of software-as-a-service (SaaS) packages from companies
such as Salesforce.com that deliver comparable software over the
Web. According to the U.K.'s ITJobsWatch.com site, Siebel experts
command an average salary of GBP52,684 ($78,564), but that's a
slide from GBP55,122 a year ago. Siebel is ranked 319 in the job
research site's list of jobs in demand, compared to 310 in
2008.
6. RAD/Extreme Programming
Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s the rapid application
development and extreme programming development philosophies
resulted in quicker and more flexible programming that embraced the
ever changing needs of customers during the development process. In
XP, developers adapted to changing requirements at any point during
the project life rather than attempting to define all requirements
at the beginning. In RAD, developers embraced interactive use of
structured techniques and prototyping to define users'
requirements. The result was accelerated software development.
Although the skills were consistently the highest paying in Foote
Partners survey since 1999, they began to lose ground in 2003 due
to the proliferation of offshore outsourcing of applications
development.
5. ColdFusion
ColdFusion users rave that this Web programming language is easy
to use and quick to jump into, but as many other independent
software tools have experienced, it's hard to compete with products
backed by expensive marketing campaigns from Microsoft and others.
The language was originally released in 1995 by Allaire, which was
acquired by Macromedia (which itself was purchased by Adobe).
Today, it is superseded by Microsoft .Net, Java, PHP and the
language of the moment: open source Ruby on Rails. A quick search
of the Indeed.com job aggregator site returned 11,045 jobs seeking
PHP skills compared to 2,027 CF jobs. Even Ruby on Rails, which is
a much newer technology receiving a major boost when Apple packaged
it with OS X v10.5 in 2007, returned 1,550 jobs openings on
Indeed.com.
4. Wireless Application Protocol
Yes, people were able to browse the Internet in the late 1990s
before Apple’s iPhone. Web site operators would rewrite their
content to the WAP’s Wireless Markup Language, enabling users to
access Web services such as email, stock results and news headlines
using their cell phones and PDAs. WAP was not well received at the
beginning because WAP sites were slow and lacked the richness of
the Web. WAP has also seen different levels of uptake worldwide
because of the different wireless regulations and standards around
the world. WAP has since evolved and is a feature of Multimedia
Messaging Service, but there are now a new generation of competing
mobile Web browsers, including Opera Mobile and the iPhone’s Safari
browser.
3. Visual J++
Skills pay for Microsoft’s version of Java declined 37.5% last
year, according to the Foote Partners’ study. The life of J++,
which is available with Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0, was not a
smooth one. Although Sun Microsystems licensed Java to Microsoft to
develop J++, Microsoft failed to implement some features of the
official Java standard while implementing other extensions of its
own. Sun sued Microsoft for licensing violations in a legal wrangle
that lasted three years. Microsoft eventually replaced J++ with
Microsoft .Net.
2. Novell NetWare
Novell’s network operating system was the de facto standard for
LANs in the 1990s, running on more than 70% of enterprise networks.
But Novell failed to compete with the marketing might of Microsoft.
Novell tried to put up a good fight by acquiring WordPerfect to
compete with Windows Office, but that move failed to ignite the
market and Novell eventually sold WordPerfect to Corel in 1996.
Novell certifications such as Certified Novell Engineer, Master
Certified Novell Engineer, Certified Novell Certified Directory
Engineer, and Novell Administrator were once hot certs in the
industry, but now they are featured in Foote Partners’ list of
skills that decreased in value in 2008. Hiring managers want
Windows Server and Linux skills instead.
1. Asynchronous Transfer Mode
ATM was popular in the late 1990s, particularly among carriers,
as the answer to overworked frame relay for wide-area networking.
It was considered more scalable than frame relay and offered
inherent QoS support. It was also marketed as a LAN platform, but
that was its weakness. According to Wikipedia, ATM failed to gain
wide acceptance in the LAN where IP makes more sense for unifying
voice and data on the network. Wikipedia notes that ATM will
continue to be deployed by carriers that have committed to existing
ATM deployments, but the technology is increasingly challenged by
speed and traffic shaping requirements of converged voice and data
networks. A growing number of carriers are now using Multi-Protocol
Label Switching (MPLS), which integrates the label-switching
capabilities of ATM with the packet orientation of IP. IT skills
researcher Foote Partners listed ATM in its IT Skills and
Certification Pay Index as a non-certified IT skill that has
decreased in value in the last six month of 2008.