EXPERT RESPONSE
Career growth depends on numerous factors beyond what you do. It also depends on how well you do it, who you do it for (and their growth opportunities) and the cost of replacing and outsourcing what you do. On the last point, information management has been slow to adopt offshoring. And, of all technical tasks in information management, I suggest the necessary iterative and business-oriented process of building the end-user applications and interfaces may be the most difficult tier to offshore. Domestic outsourcing will, likewise, be difficult to do just for the data access layer. However, decisions do get made to offshore entire information lifecycle management (ILM) applications, such as data warehouses, and all layers can get caught up in that. Of course, that job stays onshore and your prospects don't necessarily dim when that happens – as long as you're willing to work for one of the outsourcers.
As I said, career growth depends on what you do for a job. Whether you are fortunate or chose well, it sounds like you happen to be deploying the toolset of a company that is a leader in information management, and who will participate strongly in defining how information management is shaped in the next decade. Congratulations there. Also, let's face it, many end-user companies branch out within a software company's toolset, providing you opportunities to broaden into other areas. Well-roundedness across the information management spectrum is good for a career and it seems your company would have some good tools to do that with.
As for how well you do your job and who you do it for, you need to coldly assess that for yourself. If you choose to change companies, it would be good to have the breadth that gives you flexibility in your search. Good luck.
More on data management jobs:
Data management jobs are out there, but many don't know it
Data warehousing jobs: Using your database administrator experience
Business intelligence jobs: Where are they?
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