Certification - June 2008 - (Page 26)

JOB ROLES New Opportunities and Challenges: Are Application Developers Ready? LOUIS MARASCIO Pushed by technological innovations and empowered by the rise of collaborative tools brought about by the ascendance of Web 2.0 technologies, application developers are facing a wide-open landscape to apply their skills. Armed with tools such as AJAX and Ruby on Rails, and bolstered by the rise of software as a service, application developers have multiple venues to ply their trade, whether in Web-based applications, in the data center or within the local area network. With the collaborative evolution of the Web as well as the enterprise, there has been a shift in the way application developers are approaching their work. They are more fully cognizant of the business impacts of their labor. With this knowledge in hand, application developers are moving further away from siloed job roles and closer to the strategic apex of their organizations. for growth, but we’re convinced that one of the biggest potential areas for new applications is the acceleration of unified communications (UC) adoption. Previously, voice and the Web lived in silos. For Web application developers to have the audacity to touch the telecom cabinet, they might be run out of the office. Now, with UC deployments gaining market share and the migration from copper to fiber well under way, these two previously independent worlds are rapidly colliding, spurring creative chaos and providing a brand new marketplace for applications development. This new generation of telephony deployments will create a myriad of new opportunities for converged applications that will take advantage of new technology, transform business processes and create entirely new business models. Key to the success of any of these applications is their ability to grow the business or reduce costs. Application developers must take advantage of tools that reduce development timeframes, employ an application life-cycle management strategy and ultimately deliver a supreme user experience. Migration and Acceleration The initial wave of migrations to unified communications was largely driven by telephony cost savings through toll bypass and a reduction in total cost of ownership through network convergence and IP telephony. The next wave, which many customers are in now, is the acceleration of unified communications applications such as presence, mobility, collaboration and video to transform the way they do business Looking Forward As we speculatively look to the future of application development, we are able to identify several vectors 26 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE June 2008

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Certification - June 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Online Degrees: Are They Right for You? Inside Certification New Opportunities and Challenges: Are Application Developers Ready? Interface Where Have All the Help Desks Gone? Ad Index Endtag

Certification - June 2008

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