by Jeff Garell
I’ve never done a predictions post before – mainly because it’s really just guessing and the predictions are usually so obvious as to make them, well, not really predictions or they’re so out there that you it’ll require unicorns and rainbows to come true.
So as I start this, I have no idea how it will turn out. Hopefully interesting enough to keep your attention – many of these have been on prediction articles year after year. That’s mostly because these technologies or solutions are continuing to mature and gain adoption. I think we can consider this post more about trends than predictions.
Cloud adoption will continue to rise as Hewlett Packard exits the hosting market and competition heats up among Amazon (the 800-pound gorilla), Microsoft and Google. I think Microsoft has been doing all of the right things with Azure by adding support for Linux servers, and there is a future in docker-style container technologies. Microsoft’s offering has become very reliable and stable, and I believe that its experience in this arena has led to vast improvements in its most recent server operating systems. But Amazon is still the one to beat, given its long head start, continued improvements and new service offerings. The one knock I hear on Amazon is that it’s easy to get your stuff into an Amazon solution but moving back to premises-based is very difficult. This is the main reason HP (now HP Enterprise) bought Eucalyptus. We’ll continue to see businesses large and small move workloads into the cloud. Even more exciting to me is the hybrid cloud concept, where workloads can be moved from your on-premises infrastructure to the cloud and back.
Mobility and BYOD use will increase as more and more of our everyday thick applications become apps. This has an impact on security, accessibility, infrastructure and policy. Not necessarily in that order, but that’s unfortunately the order that things get considered, especially in the small to low-mid sized organizations. Do you have a mobile device/BYOD policy in place and the controls to enforce the policy? For example, do you allow your employees access to corporate information - even simply email - from their personal cell phone and how do respond when they lose that phone or simply go in for their upgrade replacement? Policies like enabling encryption, the ability to remotely wipe the device if it’s lost or stolen or the simple process of having someone wipe the corporate data (emails, documents, etc) when someone leaves your company. This will also drive the need to adopt a more robust and secure wireless infrastructure in order to support these addition wireless only devices.
Many of these trends are being driven more and more by the millennial workforce. These new entrants to the job market are more technically savvy (as users at least) than previous generations, and they’ve grown up not really knowing a time before the Internet. They generally don’t need end-user training on how to use a computer or search for information, which is certainly a positive trait. However, they have certain expectations on how things can/should operate. That convoluted home-grown Microsoft access application that you built in the 1990s probably won’t hold much interest and may generally drive them crazy. Prepare yourself for the requests that may drive you to adopt the previous two paragraphs trends.
Security will continue to be a problem, and there will still be no silver bullet. At least weekly, I read about someone’s lost/stolen laptop exposing personal data on thousands of customers/clients/patients. This is a policy problem. Most security issues are made possible by a policy problem. The first question you should be asking yourself is “What kind of data is my employees taking off the premises and why?” – and then you can develop policies and procedures (mixed with a little technology) to mitigate as much of the risk as possible. Some simple things can be done to protect your data that travels, such as either full-disk encryption or even encrypted “containers” that will hold your proprietary or personal information. In addition, there will continue to be breaches and denial-of-service attacks both large and small. I also expect the state-sponsored types of attacks to continue.
Converged and hyper-converged systems will increasingly become the preferred solution. For many applications and use cases, deploying these systems is the right answer. Easily deployed and expanded as well as being quite dense, they can offer a tremendous savings in rack space and power requirements. For example, HPE’s CS-250 has four servers (nodes) in a 2U footprint. Which can translate to 84 servers in one 42U rack – and these include the storage as well. In addition, it would make for a great Remote-Office/Branch-Office (ROBO) or retail location solution.
Well there ya go – that turned out a little better than I thought it would, given that it’s a predictionstrends post. In a shameless plug, I’d like to say that CTG stands ready and able to discuss or demonstrate all of these technologies and more. Just give us a call.
I hope you and your loved ones have a wonderful holiday and safe and happy new year!
Jeff Garell is co-founder of Convergent Technologies Group.
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