Tom Clement has reinvented his career before. In 1984, he realized working in technology would suit him better than his job as a litigator in Texas. "I came home one day from work, and I was used to being really tense," he says. "But that day, my secretary's recorder had broke. I'd taken it apart, put it back together, and somehow, it worked. I was whistling and in a good mood because of it, and my girlfriend heard me and said,'Tom, maybe you were made for a different line of work.'"

After moving to California and taking a night class at University of California at Berkeley in C-Programming, he put his law ambitions aside and took a job at a C-compiler company, taking pieces of code and translating it into a language that could work on Motorola hardware.

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Today, Clement, a journeyman in software development, might be facing a bigger career test: the movement of software to the Web and the effect it will have on developers like himself and the thousands of IT support and maintenance pros taking care of traditional software at small and large enterprises across all industries.

Software as a service (SaaS), one flavor of today's hot buzzword, cloud computing, refers to applications that users access over the Web and which live on physical servers hosted by the software vendors or a third party, not servers owned and cared for by an in-house IT department.

"I've got some learning to do in my 50s," Clement says. "Now, I need to know more about Web 2.0 and Java programming. While I know I can, I still have that fear of, 'will I be able to do it?'"

Clement, now senior developer at Serena Software, in some ways is already adapting, as his company has begun building SaaS applications along side its traditional software. And sure, developers have been through big transitions in computing before, most notably the move from mainframe computers to the PC era.

The IT industry is now preparing for a new round of upheaval as a result of SaaS adoption of offerings from the likes of Google (with its Google Apps) and Salesforce.com that let users run applications via the Internet. Zoho, a SaaS vendor that does most of its development work in India, has also sold a plethora of applications, including in staple, Microsoft-dominated areas like word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.

SaaS adoption by enterprises has been aggressive. A report in May conducted by Kelton research found that 73 percent of large companies saying they would adopt SaaS or plan to adopt it in the next 18 months.

Coupled with the consumerization of IT -- the idea that people at their jobs expect applications at work to look like the Web technologies they use at home such as Facebook and Google -- many IT professionals will be forced to rethink their skill sets and what value they bring to their companies, says Jeffrey Kaplan, president of THINKstrategies, a consultancy that helps companies adopt SaaS applications.

"Unfortunately, most developers have built enterprise applications to meet their current systems environment and the end-user was very secondary," Kaplan says. "Now, the end-user experience is the driving factor, because end-users determine whether or not the application is considered successful."

In addition, maintenance veterans -- the guys who handle the plumbing of IT -- will see their job options start to recede. That reality can be both a challenge and an opportunity for the IT industry, says Peter Coffee, Director of Force.com, the platform provided by Salesforce.com for developers building SaaS-based apps.

"If you're in the ecosystem of working on staple, on-premise software, you can take care of feeding and watering those systems," Coffee says. "But those low value tasks no longer need to be done and you won't cover the IT equivalent of infantry. You want to be the IT equivalent of special forces."

Those special forces might include building new features on top of SaaS apps that fit a company's specific needs, or managing the relationships a company has between two or more SaaS vendors who both provide technology to the same company, making sure the systems talk well with one another, says Ken Venner, senior VP and CIO of corporate services at Broadcom.

"Working with vendors will really become ever more critical," Venner says. "One of the skills that will start to reduce is core infrastructure skills."

The post-modern IT departmentToday, most large companies use a mix of both traditional apps that they host with servers on premise and some that they let the Salesforce.coms of the world host offsite. But the idea of a plug and play IT department isn't a dream. Tim Davis, CIO of Popeyes Chicken, a national fast food chain based in Atlanta, Ga., only has six IT people and not one server on premise.

Not all of his apps are SaaS-based. A SaaS vendor, by his definition, is a company that provides the software over the Web, hosts it, and charges a subscription fee (generally per user per month). Popeyes owns the licenses for some of its software, and worked out a contract with IBM to host and support the servers for those apps.

But that contract, which includes IBM's hosting of Popeyes' e-mail system (Microsoft Exchange), will expire in 2009. Microsoft recently released a SaaS version of Exchange for a mere $10 per user per year. When Popeyes' contract with IBM expires, Davis admits he could pursue more SaaS options as it would likely cost him less money that outsourcing to Big Blue.

So if there are no servers and the like, what does his IT department do?

"Three [people] are dedicated towards making sure the restaurants have whatever technology they need," he says. "The rest are project managers and manage our relationships with vendors."

Developers adaptMost people who spend their lives in technology know that adaptation is necessary to job survival. Nobody can keep up with the pace of technology innovation entirely; the best you can do is stay ahead of the curve enough to remain viable.

For developers, that'll mean embracing new programming languages and open Web standards when creating their enterprise software. But making the transition doesn't have to be terribly difficult, says Force.com's Coffee. "If you currently develop in Java or.Net, and you understand enough about databases, the language of ours is very readable," he says.

For IT support people who handle enterprise infrastructure and back-end support, future roles might include working in the datacenter of a SaaS vendor, or helping ensure that a company can integrate various SaaS apps, says Fred Luddy, president and CEO of Service-Now, an IT service management company that runs on a SaaS model.

"Integration will be the main challenge," he says. "IT will be at a higher level."

While Serena Software's Clement knows he has some learning to do, he knows enough to be prepared for changes in software development. "My experience has always been that programming is programming," he says. "The language is sort of a detail. There's this sea change in the computing world right now. The environment is changing, and while I have fears, there's nothing more thrilling than working on something that will be relevant for the future."

CIO.com is an InfoWorld affiiliate.

Microsoft this week is proceeding with an update to Windows Vista and Windows Server, making available a beta-level service pack featuring capabilities for virtualization and power savings.

The company on Tuesday began offering the Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 SP2 (Service Pack 2) Beta release to MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will extend it to the public via TechNet on Thursday. Offering a single service pack minimizes deployment and testing complexity, Microsoft said.

Included in the service pack, according to the Windows Server Division blog, are Hyper-V bits in the release-to-manufacturing stage, meaning the bits are completed. Hyper-V is Microsoft's hypervisor-based server virtualization technology enabling multiple operating systems to run on a single physical machine. This enables workload consolidation across multiple underutilized servers onto a smaller number of machines.

Also highlighted in the service pack are changes to the power profile to yield more power savings. The service pack also addresses reliability and performance issues and supports new types of hardware. The 64-bit CPU from Via Technologies is supported and performance is improved for Wi-Fi connections after resuming from sleep mode.

"We are tracking to ship SP2 in the first half of 2009," said Justin Graham, senior product manager for Windows Server, in the blog.

With the release, Microsoft is looking for developers and IT professionals to have an early look at the technology and offer feedback. The beta is being offered via a Microsoft Customer Preview Program (CPP)

"The CPP is intended for technology enthusiasts, developers, and IT pros who would like to test Service Pack 2 in their environments and with their applications prior to final release. For most customers, our best advice would be to wait until the final release prior to installing this service pack," said Mike Nash, corporate vice president for Windows Product Management at Microsoft, in The Windows Blog on Tuesday.

"Windows Vista SP2 builds on the solid foundation of Windows Vista SP1, and represents our ongoing commitment to Windows Vista today," Nash said.

VMware released on Tuesday VMware View 3, new software aimed at providing desktop virtualization, application virtualization, and management of virtual desktops in one product.

VMware View is a reworking of the company's VMware Desktop Infrastructure product that adds other components to solve the problem of managing virtualized desktop environments, said Raj Mallempati, a group product manager of desktop products for VMware.

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VMware View is part of an initiative that VMware is calling vClient, which it unveiled at its VMworld conference in September. Mallempati said with the vClient strategy, VMware hopes to solve the "desktop dilemma" of not only virtualizing applications and desktops, but also managing and deploying those environments.

"At the end of the day, we also want to make sure we can provide end-users with a virtualized view of their desktops, applications and data," he said.

In addition to providing desktop virtualization, VMware View 3 includes View Composer, a new product that creates virtual desktops from a master image; VMware ThinApp, which simplifies application packaging and deployment to a virtual desktop environment; and Offline Desktop, which provides the ability to move virtual desktops between the datacenter and a local laptop or desktop. The product also includes Unified Access, which provides desktop administrators a single management platform for virtual desktops and applications.

VMware View 3 comes in an Enterprise Edition and a Premier Edition. The Enterprise Edition includes VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition, VMware View Manager 3, and Unified Access, and it costs $150 per concurrent user for a perpetual user license. The Premier Edition includes those products but adds VMware View Manager 3, VMware ThinApp, VMware View Composer, and Offline Desktop. It costs $250 per concurrent user for a perpetual license.

As virtualization of server OSes becomes more common, both VMware, which remains the leader in the virtualization software market, and other vendors are expanding their offerings to tackle the problem of virtualization desktops and applications that run on desktop computers.

Even though VMware remains the leader in virtualization across the board, the company has had a bumpy year in which it's faced its stiffest competition to date. Vendors such as Microsoft are building virtualization directly into their server OSes and are branching out into desktop and application virtualization. And in July, the company had a major executive shake-up, with CEO Diane Greene leaving suddenly to be replaced by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz.

Oracle has contributed data-integrity protection code, partly developed with the hardware vendor Emulex, to the Linux kernel, the vendors announced Tuesday.

The code helps maintain "comprehensive data integrity" as information "moves from application to database, and from [the] Linux operating system to disk storage," according to a statement. It also lowers the possibility that erroneous data will get written to disk.

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The companies' effort is meant to help datacenter administrators track and address corrupted data quickly, lowering costs and downtime, said Scott McIntyre, vice president of product marketing at Emulex, in a statement.

Oracle and Emulex, which makes products for connecting servers, networks, and storage systems, are developing an early-adopter program that will help customers start working with the new features.

When a lot of information is moving through various aspects of a system very quickly, its integrity can suffer, said Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady. And at the same time, data integrity grows more vital as systems scale up, he added.

But improvements like the code contribution announced Tuesday are only "one piece of the puzzle," and will work in tandem with next-generation Linux file systems now under development, such as Btrfs, he said.

The Btrfs project, now available under the GPL open-source license, was first developed at Oracle.

Oracle is a key contributor, along with other large vendors, to the kernel project. The company makes money on Linux through its Unbreakable Linux support service.

Microsoft has released a new wave of Windows Live services that adds more social-networking qualities to its set of online services.

The company unveiled last month a plan to add Facebook-like qualities to its set of online services, which include e-mail, calendaring, instant-messaging, photo-storage, and sharing and collaboration services, among others. At the time, the company said the new services would be available to users before the end of the year.

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Microsoft first revealed the Windows Live brand for its online services and a plan for a major overhaul and to add new services in November 2005. The services are aimed at competing with Google by making Windows Live Web users' entry point into the Web and ultimately allow Microsoft to sell more online advertising.

The new version of Windows Live services lets people users have designated as "friends" see activities they are doing in other Web applications through Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, and other Live applications and services. The capabilities will be similar to the way Facebook allows users to be notified via e-mail or on its Web site about what their friends have been doing in the applications they use on Facebook, a feature called the "news feed."

To provide the new "activities" feature, Microsoft has partnered with popular third-party Web sites to link their applications with Windows Live, including Flickr, iLike, LinkedIn, Yelp, Flixster, Pandora, Twitter, Photobucket, and Tripit.

In addition to updates to existing services, such as Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Spaces, there also are several new services available to users with Tuesday's release.

They include Windows Live Groups, a service for letting teams, clubs or other groups of people collaborate and engage in online discussions; Windows Live Photos, a new photo-storage and sharing service; Windows Live Profile, a way for people to share information about themselves with more than 50 partner sites; and Windows Live People, which allows users to store and manage Windows Live contacts.

Users can access the new services online now.

Zoho, maker of an on-demand suite of business and productivity applications, announced on Tuesday CloudSQL, a new service that lets developers use the ubiquitous SQL to connect Zoho data with other cloud-based or on-premises applications.

SQL is a "pretty old" language but is also "pretty awesome," said Zoho's director of marketing, Rodrigo Vaca, in a blog post Tuesday. "It is by far one of the easiest and most efficient ways to query and interact with structured data. That's why it remains by far one of the most heavily used languages for business applications."

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Cloud computing has ushered in new methods of data retrieval and storage, leading to "improved, faster, and more responsive Web applications," Vaca added. "But while there are some SQL-like approaches for cloud computing out there, they tend to be fairly limited and not as powerful as the full-blown SQL."

CloudSQL supports a wide range of SQL variants, including ANSI, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, and MySQL.

The service "serves as the bridge between the external application and the data stored inside Zoho. It receives the query in SQL, interprets it, delegates queries and aggregates results across the Zoho services," Vaca wrote.

The company has also developed a JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) driver and is working on an ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) driver. This means developers "can just continue using SQL drivers and statements as they already regularly interact with their premises-based databases using JDBC or ODBC drivers," Zoho said in a statement.

Initially, Zoho Reports, a BI and reporting service, will support CloudSQL. Other products, such as Zoho CRM, will support it down the road.

Zoho's announcement represents an attempt to win over IT specialists who haven't been quite ready to embrace the cloud-computing model, one observer suggested Tuesday.

"CloudSQL simply represents an incremental move that will enable Zoho to grow, extending a comfort blanket to nervous DBAs seeking reasons to resist relinquishing control over their data," wrote Paul Miller, a blogger who tracks trends in cloud computing and the semantic Web.

For now, CloudSQL is available at no cost. Zoho, which is a division of the Pleasanton, Calif., company AdventNet, will monitor usage and decide whether it needs to begin charging for it, according to a representative.

CloudSQL is somewhat unusual in that it lets users connect their Zoho apps and others in a free and broadly compatible manner, instead of forcing them to use a proprietary tool that carries a price tag, said RedMonk analyst Michael Coté.

"Access to data is the key problem for all these [cloud-based applications]," he said. "That's where the lock-in is, it seems, in such offerings. Whoever controls access to the data can control pricing."