2011: The Road Ahead

Happy New Year!

I know that there are a glut of these sorts of posts out there and that I'm definitely a Johnny-come-lately to the party but I was having a think in the few days leading up to my return to work in this new year and I wanted to record a little of what I was thinking about.

Foremost on my mind is what I'm going to be doing this year. I can't say much because at present I just don't have the answers myself. I know what I want to be doing though and I've taken steps already. I'll let you know how things progress.

I also want to write more blog posts. I've never been what you would call “regular” in that respect but 2010 represented a fairly dire effort on my part. I have a number of posts that are part written and several that require (i.e. I promised to do it) follow-ups.

Otherwise, the majority of my musings have been about (wait for it) Clouds and Virtual Infrastructure management. The big push is coming that will take us all into the cloud, so some will have you believe. Actually Clouds have accounted for a portion of my poor blogging performance this year. But I mustn't digress.

All of the big vendors are flexing their cloud credentials. It's big money. But I think that some caution is required. Not everyone is ready and some may never be.

I've worked with a variety of organisations in the past. Some like to stay at the cutting edge of technology and some have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. I welcome innovations and new ideas and I love the reach feature set that VMware's suite of products has. But I think that VMware are going to have to be careful that they find the right balance between pushing the boundaries of technology and pushing potential / current customers to one of their competitors.

On the subject of innovation, I'd like to see a major overhaul of vCenter sometime soon. With all of the functionality that VMware now have in it, it's beginning to creak a bit.

I could carry on for ages on these topics but my opinions are probably best shared over a drink and I have other, more immediate, things that I want to write about and do.