2010 was to be the year of the cloud. Did it happen for you? Odds are: no. What was 2010, really?
A few things stand out for me.
- This was the year of the cloud…. the ash cloud from Iceland. That sucker ruined international transport by airplane and will give MS Lync sales people a boost. The unprecedented snow in Ireland will add momentum.
- I spent most of the year writing or editing. I wrote the proposal to Sybex for Mastering Hyper-V Deployment while jetlagged at the MVP summit in my hotel in Belleview (near Redmond) while my annoyed room mate grumbled
Half a year later I finished the book, and then went on to do work on Mastering Windows 7 Deployment. Rest; what’s that? - Facebook just exploded all over us. That cannot be denied. We had the movie about the founding (which I enjoyed) and Mark Zuckerberg was named man of the year by Time magazine. Let’s remember that’s for an American audience and they also thought the Irish prime minister was one of the world’s best leaders just a few months ago
- It was the year of the iPad. It was iThis and iThat all over the place since the spring. Even a pro-MS nutter like me even succumbed and bought an iPhone 4.
- Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 Kinect. I bought one last weekend and it is awesome. There have been genuinely massive sales of this Wii-beater. I got the last one in the local store. Console gaming will never be the same again. Could this be the future of the PC too?
- The application/data are king! Now more than ever, the business care’s little for the IT infrastructure, and all about application and data availability. See the private cloud below.
So what will happen in 2011? If I knew for certain then I’d be a rich man. Anyway, here’s how my brain’s synapses are firing right now:
- It will be the year of the clouds: public, private and cross-premises/hybrid. IBM, HP, Dell (rumoured), Fujitsu (Azure appliance) are all developing cloud platforms because they know they have to. Microsoft and Amazon were in first. Microsoft’s Azure VM Role will be quite different and will have the advantage of having direct integration with the on-premises private cloud.
- System Center pros are going to have a big year. SCVMM, OpsMgr and ConfigMgr are all releasing 2012 versions with big improvements over already fine products. We’re still playing catch up with Opalis and Service Manager 2010. It will be a busy/fun year.
- The Dynamic Datacenter/Private Cloud. These are slightly different but based on the same technologies. MIcrosoft’s DSI (dynamic systems initiative) continues and evolves as always. More automation and compliance management is made possible via Opalis (automation) and Service Manager (compliance and control), giving us the Dynamic Datacenter based on the complete System Center package. The private cloud is based on VMM 2012/VMM 2008 R2 & SCVMM SSP 2.0 and a Hyper-V compute cluster with System Center managing everything. Automation and self-service are the aims. That’s because the business wants to deploy applications quickly and know they are available. They care nothing for the servers or network appliances beneath them.
- Windows 8!?!?!? Rumours have appeared that Steve Ballmer will preview Windows 8 at CES in Las Vegas in January 2011. You can bet that serious development started back in the Summer once the Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 SP1 code was developed (not bug fixed). Some reckon an RTM will happen in November 2011. I’ve nothing that I can add to that but it does seem quite aggressive. Commentators are already saying it will continue the approach of Windows 7: evolve rather than revolutionise. That seems like a wise move to me (see XP to Vista). Most big changes might be in the GUI, based on the leaks that were revealed a while back.
Whoops! My Aldi crystal ball just rolled off the table and hit the ground. That’s about all I have in me for now. What do you think 2011 is going to bring?