[quarck]

Sysadmins will not disappear, however, their role will change. The old hardware lugger/patchjockey role is on the way out. However, managing the sensitive data of the organization will be a role forever: data has to be transported, converted, stored, retrieved, archived, etc.

Especially in organisations which handle data of a sensitive nature the sys-admin (or whatever his/her role will be called) will have an important role in the organisation (think especially of organisations which have to conform to HIPAA, PCI, or other data protection regulations).

The success of an organization will in these Internet times be determined by the value of the (customer) data it holds and the ability to extract business value from that data. A data admin is therefore an essential task in any organisation. The future role of Sysadmins will therefore move in that direction in my opionion.

Disclaimer: the writer is an IT Architect at a large DataCenter Services Provider.