What do Virtualization and Cloud executives think about 2012? Find out in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
CA Technologies: 10 Virtualization and Cloud Predictions for 2012
Contributed
Article by Andi Mann, VP of Strategic Solutions at CA Technologies
Welcome to IT prediction season! Again, I am inspired to
throw my exceedingly fallible hat into the ring with my predictions, specifically
for virtualization and cloud. I seem to have had a
decent run of predictions last year, but I claim more luck than credit. I
still think predictions are a mug's game, and continue to eschew both the
importance and reliability of predictions.
That said, here are my predictions for 2012:
1. Brands May Come and Go - But No Technology Will Die
Not only are we not
living in a ‘post-PC' world, we are not even living in a ‘post-mainframe' world!
Cloud will not kill data centers, virtual will not kill physical, tablets will
not kill PCs, Mac will not kill Windows, Android will not kill iOS, streaming
will not kill DVDs. The technology pie is growing, our choices are expanding,
and almost every slice is getting bigger. So be prepared to manage an
ever-increasing selection of technologies across public and private boundaries.
2. Hybrid IT Will Be ‘The Next Big Thing'
‘Hybrid cloud' was
soooo 2011! In this new world of choices, business will expect hybrid IT: a
combination of on-site and off-site; cloud and legacy; private and public; physical
and virtual; social and secure; enterprise and consumer; desktop and server;
mobile and static. Business will also expect IT to make them work together, whether
IT owns the service or not. IT must act as a trusted advisor, as a service
broker, and as quality assurance for this brave new world of complex Hybrid IT.
3. Service Quality Will Be IT's Responsibility Again
As hybrid IT proliferates, business owners will (again) realize
they do not want to manage technology; they just want it to work. In 2012, end
users will increasingly expect IT to take responsibility for service quality,
regardless of who is buying, selling, or delivering that service. IT will need
to eliminate the blind spots in hybrid IT, actively support an explosion of
devices, deal with complex cross-boundary services, and find a way to deliver a
360-degree
service assurance across all facets of end-user experience.
4. Public Cloud Adoption Will Slow
Given the results of this
year's Longhaus research from Australia - an early adopter market and a
bellwether for business technology - I suspect the rest of the world is in for
a slowdown of public cloud adoption. Issues (perceived or real) with security, compliance,
service quality, skills, staffing, complexity, and good old politics will all put
the brakes on. Whether ‘cloud stall' will be as pronounced as ‘virtual stall' is
unsure, but 2012 will see a marked slowdown in public cloud adoption.
5. Public Cloud ‘Gets' Security
Sad but true - many (most?) enterprise decision-makers still
do not trust public cloud. In 2012, IT must do a better job of deploying and
explaining cloud security - and I believe we will! In 2012, CIOs will see security
as less of a barrier to cloud adoption as organizations adopt more and better cloud-oriented
security solutions - including solutions designed for complex hybrid cloud services,
as well as solutions that are delivered through the cloud with easily-consumed Security
SaaS options.
6. Big Iron is Back - Part I
No, mainframe is still not dead. On the contrary, 2012 will
see the rise of the mainframe as a *gasp* cloud platform. Massively scalable,
hosting critical (and underutilized) ‘big data', capable
of running complex cloud workloads on a variety of architectures (z/OS,
Linux, UNIX, Windows), mainframe is really an obvious cloud platform. It will
not replace commodity clouds, but large enterprises and governments especially
will leverage their investments and bring big iron into their cloud mix.
7. Cloud Gets Heterogeneous
Not only will mainframe become part of the cloud landscape, but
public cloud providers will also start to offer UNIX and maybe even other
non-x86 platforms. I have recently seen
this in action (CA
did it internally years ago), and most large enterprises are heavily
dependent on heterogeneous systems for their mission-critical applications. Despite
the common myth that cloud == commodity servers, heterogeneous servers will
start to become more available for large enterprise deployments.
8. Big Iron is Back - Part II
Big iron concepts of integrated compute, network, and
storage are resurgent - but this is not your grandpa's mainframe. Deployment of
integrated fabrics like Cisco
UCS and VCE
Vblock will accelerate rapidly in 2012 as IT changes the way it thinks
about integrated infrastructure for virtualization and cloud - and realizes how
amazing these integrated boxes are for diverse, dynamic, high-volume workloads
like desktop virtualization, pop-up data centers, and cloudbursting.
9. ‘Grown-up' Cloud Service
Management Comes To The Forefront
In 2011, the NIST
Cloud Reference Architecture devoted a whole section to ‘Cloud Service
Management', and IT started to talk about ‘grown-up' disciplines - planning,
budgeting, performance, asset, inventory, service levels, audit, etc. In 2012, even
‘commodity' cloud vendors will finally take cloud management seriously, as
enterprises and governments demand these disciplines - and smaller providers
differentiate on service and security, not just price.
10. Virtualization Management Becomes Irrelevant
In January
2009 I predicted, "in
3-5 years ... niche [Virtual System Management] vendors will no longer survive,
as virtualization becomes a core part of the enterprise compute fabric." Three
years later this trend has definitely started, and will accelerate in 2012 as IT
turns instead to hybrid IT management, recognizing that silos of standalone
virtualization management is a costly and inefficient burden. Maybe 2012 is not
the end of Virtualization Management, but it is going to be the start of
the demise.
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So that is my punt on 2012. I have no idea whether they will
come true, but they seem to make sense to me. Again, if you are reading this in
December 2012, please feel free to e-mail me and let me know how I went. I
won't be surprised either way. J
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About the Author
Andi Mann is vice president of Strategic Solutions at CA
Technologies. With over 20 years' experience across four continents, Andi has
deep expertise of enterprise software on cloud, mainframe, midrange, server and
desktop systems. Andi has worked within IT departments for governments and
corporations, from small businesses to global multi-nationals; with several
large enterprise software vendors; and as a leading industry analyst advising
enterprises, governments, and IT vendors - from startups to the worlds' largest
companies. He has been widely published including in the New York Times, USA Today,
CIO, ComputerWorld, InformationWeek,
TechTarget, and more. He has presented around the world on virtualization,
cloud, automation, and IT management, at events such as Gartner ITxpo, VMworld,
CA World, Interop, Cloud Computing Expo, SAPPHIRE, Citrix Synergy, Cloud Slam,
and others. Andi is a co-author of the popular handbook, ‘Visible Ops - Private
Cloud'; he blogs at ‘Andi Mann - Übergeek' (http://pleasediscuss.com/andimann),
and tweets as @AndiMann.