Azure was just announced at the PDC keynote and it is the future of cloud computing from Microsoft. Not only is this the platform for development of new applications, it’s also an offering of Microsoft’s enterprise applications online. Apparently this means ALL enterprise applications from Dynamics CRM to Exchange services. New AD based authentication services, .NET plug-ins, and Windows service connectors aim to make it easy to take what you have and move into the cloud. Microsoft described the big issue as enterprise IT department’s inability to provide robust enough uptime. Is this really true? It’s apparently now all about services, not servers.
The real question for the system administrator is; what will it mean for our current role as the sysadmin, the operations master to these applications? We have been working for years under the assumption that business will always need the IT department to maintain the infrastructure of what has become the lifeblood of most businesses, large and small. Business doesn’t move without data, without services like email, and without databases. For me, it’s still an unanswered question. Will system administrators be cast aside in favor of developers only while the great cloud manages all the services and the related issues we face today or will our role simply change because the cloud will need to be managed as well? Will we be taking a modified role maintaining networks, monitoring our cloud services, and possibly moving our troubleshooting into the cloud? It’s uncertain at this point, but this is certainly one of those disruptive technologies Gartner is always making list’s about. We’ll keep an eye out as PDC rolls on and give opinion in the next episode of CS Techcast.
- Eric Beehler (consortioservices.com/blog)