Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2018. Read them in this 10th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Jerome Fodor, Chief Technology Officer, AbacusNext
Cybersecurity Takes the Driver's Seat, and Commodity Hardware Gets a Popularity Boost
Two big trends that lead virtualization changes for 2018 are being driven by the preponderance of security breaches, and the desire by SMBs to outsource IT to a single vendor. Mainstream adoption will continue but the demands of the buyer will change.
Cybersecurity will be the driving force for virtualization and cloud growth in the SMB market.
Recent surges in security breaches at multiple prominent companies and government agencies has made cybersecurity front-page worthy news on a daily basis. Often times, the executives involved including non-technical personnel, are held accountable for these breaches. Heads are rolling and the individuals whose information is compromised are threatening litigation. This trend, along with an increasing number of small businesses being hit by Ransomware, is shifting how stakeholders view the importance of investing in technology to safeguard their business. It's no longer a "nice to have" option. Forced to take action, business owners will re-evaluate their current situation and quickly gravitate towards turn-key cloud solutions to overcome the complexities involved with the do-it-yourself or the do nothing approach that many SMBs have taken in the past.
Hyperconverged infrastructure and software defined technologies will make commodity hardware more popular.
Both VMware and now Microsoft with Server 2016, have gone all-in with comprehensive software defined technologies built into their OS/Hypervisor. The flexibility, feature set, and robustness have in many cases caught up or surpassed traditional storage/network platforms. Combine this with the trend of most network appliance makers now having parity with their virtualized solutions and you get the ability to completely detach software function from hardware. This is driving data center architects from enterprise all the way to SMB to rethink how they design from the ground up, similar to the approach that major cloud players have been doing for years now. This is where commodity servers come into play. The chassis and component options in this space are limitless and often times, significantly more flexible than traditional server maker options. This is critical when looking to maximize the performance and efficiency of a hyperconverged and software defined workload. Let's also not forget the other elephant in the room - it's usually much more cost effective.
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About the Author
Jerome Fodor is a committed leader dedicated to driving cloud growth and has more than 16 years of experience in the technology sector. Fodor is currently Chief Technology Officer at AbacusNext. He joined AbacusNext in 2013 and led Abacus' strategic technology development of Abacus Private Cloud from concept to commercialization building the largest commercially available private cloud for legal & accounting professionals. Prior to joining AbacusNext, Jerome held a variety of technology leadership positions, including 10 years as a data center solutions architect for Southern California cloud provider American Internet Services.