Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021. Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
The cloud will be your briefcase, desk and office
By J.Tyler "T. Rex" Rohrer, Co-Founder
/ Strategic Alliances, Liquidware
I am going to jump right in with my
predictions for 2021:
1. Companies will need to enable BOTH front line
revenue generators, and back office operators to work anywhere, at any time,
fully
2. The Cloud will be your Briefcase in the near
term
3. The Cloud will be your desk in the longer
term
4. The Cloud will be your office - eventually
Some advice, looking back at 2020 might be to
RUN!! Other advice might be to start preparing for the next time there is rainy
day or year! I think, if nothing else, it is safe to say we are all different
after 2020.
Given the variety, velocity, and volume of changes
that played themselves out around us - perhaps instead of anxiety and regret
over a troubling 300 days - we instead focus on the OPPORTUNITIES that lie
ahead. Yes, of course there are pitfalls out there, everywhere, but there is
also GOLD. My predictions for the coming year are those of opportunity. There
is no doom, gloom, or warnings in my forecast.
I do, however, want to make sure - apart from
just waxing prognostic - we actually talk about how whatever it is YOU discover
in 2021 can become a working part of your operational models. Nothing becomes
operational before we put it under the weight of the real world day in, and day
out.
I would like to focus on End User Computing.
1. Companies will need to enable BOTH front line
revenue generators, and back office operators to work anywhere, at any time,
fully.
For the better part of a decade I have watched
the largest agencies, organizations, and enterprises in the world attempt to do
the same thing. You may think I saw them work on getting VDI right, or storage
right, or even Windows updates right. That is not what I saw.
I saw thousands of customers, millions of end
users, and countless platforms trying to solve the same problem.
What are we doing? We were actually a bit lopsided in our
approach - focusing only on back office operators, and very rarely counting the
front line revenue producers.
What I saw was an eco system of technologies,
orchestrated by trusted advisors and subject matter experts that endeavored to
create reliable workspaces out of intrinsically unreliable parts (end users
included). Our new model will, and must,
enable any worker to work across a spectrum of possible work scenarios - the Holy
Grail is work from anywhere.
2. The Cloud will be your briefcase in the near
term
The reason we seek reliable systems is that we
know it optimizes our employees' activity. What they create and consume is bigger
and better when the systems work. Broken systems are a cost center and add no
revenue.
While it would be phenomenal if we could
"switch on" the cloud and accomplish our first prediction of truly untethered
computing, the reality is that today, the cloud is your briefcase. It began
with simple file storage, cloud backup, then Azure Active Directory, server
based computing apps streamed to you, etc.
While it is noble, albeit daunting and
early, to dive in to full desktops at the start, most companies appear to be
cloud staging. Cloud staging takes the components of the desktop and
systematically finds solutions in the cloud for each (storage, apps, admin,
etc). If we have your files, your documents, your data, some of your apps, a
backup of your identity perhaps, security parameters, remote help desk and
administration - prediction #1 is possible, not simply PowerPoint. You count, and your stuff is in the cloud,
however today's computation takes place near you on hyper converged and superfast
storage.
3. The Cloud will be your desk in the longer
term
Yes, longer term we orchestrate our cloud
staging, and begin to run a fuller "desktop" in the cloud - which to me is more
like a mashup of the cloud briefcase solutions, plus a standard runtime, and
maybe a standard control plane. This is your desk - your drawers, your storage,
your lock and keys, your customizable user experience, etc.
These systems are now not simply to
enable you to work from home. These systems are everywhere, and anywhere, and they
should be. It is very important in this prediction to focus on BOTH types of
systems. We should focus equally on the systems that we use to operate our
marketing, legal, accounting, development, and operation insuring they are not
land locked to a static office cubical.
We also need to make sure we focus on the front
line systems - taking care of customers, patients, clients and more. End points will matter more, not less, and be
hyper-specialized - and ready to handshake with either your cloud briefcase or
your cloud desk.
My follow-on prediction is there is no economy
of scale like the cloud or today's battle tested hyper converged platforms.
While there will be different architectures for different use cases, files, and
applications, the first place to begin is with your existing storage vendor.
4. The Cloud will be your office - eventually
Working from anywhere is not just going to LOWER
the cost vector of your end user computing estate, it is also going to
radically change the front line revenue vector. Point of sale, point of care,
point of security, point of incident - the new workspace is anywhere, and to
insure an elegant user and customer
experience, it should be. The OFFICE
CLOUD that is coming is a communal compute, aggregation, data mining,
intelligence, security, and collaboration - and while my prediction is cool, we
have plenty to focus on for 2021!
Think of it this way, Covid-19 not only forced
us all to REBOOT our current operating systems figuratively speaking - it is
also giving us a brand new, never seen before, fresh install of a completely
new version. What we build on top of that
will be incredible in 2021.
##
About the Author
J.Tyler "T. Rex" Rohrer, Co-Founder
/ Strategic Alliances, Liquidware
Tyler Rohrer co-founded Liquidware after leaving a key
role within VMware's Enterprise Desktop Team. Previously, he was a partner at
FOEDUS, which was acquired by VMware. Tyler heads up the Strategic Alliance
program and is engaged in managing the company's relationships with major platform
and storage partners. He has been an official member of the Forbes Technology
Council since 2017. The FTC is an invitation-only organization for technology
executives.