The Year Ahead

What is a dynamic datacenter? How does a dynamic datacenter enable private cloud computing and fit within a long term, enterprise cloud strategy? What can be achieved now with Microsoft and partner solutions while laying the ground work for future product and service waves?

These questions and many more like them will be my focus this year and the primary subject matter of this blog. I have recently transitioned to a different role within Microsoft Services which will let me focus on these topics and related customer projects full time. Previously I have been a 100% customer facing architect in MCS covering infrastructure architecture with projects last year ranging across AD, SharePoint, OCS, Hyper-V, System Center, etc. While great in terms of breadth, it didn’t allow me to focus on the virtualization, management, and cloud computing topics as much as I would have liked.

In my new role I report to the CTO of Microsoft’s US Public Sector Services business as an Architect focusing on virtualization and dynamic datacenters. In this capacity I will be working even more closely with the relevant product and services groups, have greater involvement with the large opportunities and customer projects in this space, and provide leadership in expanding Microsoft’s virtualization and datacenter services and offerings.

While it took some time, Microsoft has finally turned the ship and is focused squarely on virtualization, dynamic datacenters, and cloud computing. Between Hyper-V R2, VMM R2, Azure, and BPOS plus acquisitions such as Calista, Kidaro (MED-V), and Opalis, it should be very clear that Microsoft is serious about this space.

The biggest benefit of the cloud computing hype cycle that we are in today is that it is forcing organizations to finally look at infrastructure architecture in a holistic way and ask fundamental questions like what services should be run on premise vs. off premise, how to implement a service provider/chargeback model for IT, how to develop “cloud ready” applications which can be deployed in private or public clouds and spanning both when desired?

These topics and many others should keep us a bit busy this year!