Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019.  Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by LEON ADATO, Head Geek, SolarWinds

A Programmer's Paradise

It's just turned to 2019, and some people are still worried about robots either taking their job or taking over the world. We thought "automation anxiety" was dwindling (we even predicted it last year), but evidence still shows that, despite its transformative potential, automation is still too often perceived as a significant threat to technology professionals' careers. However, in 2019, we expect that tech pros will realize that contrary to widespread automation anxiety, they can actually automate themselves into a job rather than out of a job. As a result, we will see a dramatic acceleration of programming culture at organizations that have not experimented in this space before.

Many technology professionals working within a hybrid environment are already on the cusp of this transition, as the ability to use a GUI, CLI, or an API to manage cloud workloads is driving greater competency in automation and advanced scripting skills. As admins support ever more cloud workloads, we'll see a greater number of tech pros become successful at using APIs, GUIs, and CLIs to define not only networks, storage, and services, but a number of other processes, such as managing container queues. At the same time, automation technology will also deliver significant benefits to tech pros who are focused on the systems side of the house, who must begin to think more in terms of command-line actions and transition to an automation and orchestration-led way of doing things.

Ultimately, as tech professionals-especially those working at small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs)-become more enlightened by the transformative potential of automation tools, we expect they will simultaneously identify opportunities to automate a variety of processes. The growth of conferences like DevNet at Cisco Live!-which will dominate nearly 75% of next year's Cisco Live! event-is proof positive that 2019 will be a programmer's paradise.

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About the Author

LEON ADATO, Head Geek

Leon's 30 years of network and systems management and monitoring experience spans the financial, healthcare, food and beverage, and other industries, with 20 years focused specifically on monitoring and management.