I spent some time talking with Microsoft about the upcoming releases and one thing is very clear. The view you take of the environment will soon be quite different. Today, it’s all about on-premise vs. public cloud (yes, I realize there are options). But, the new releases here, or on the way will make it so "where" isn’t important, it’s more about what’s best for the application(s).
Three clouds – on-premise/private cloud, third-party providers, and public cloud (Azure) – are the focus of just about everything coming out. The really cool thing is that it’s not actually about addressing each of these, but rather about addressing all of them. What I mean by that is that the tools, management and functionality are evolving to support each of these equally and transparently. There may be small functional differences that have to be accounted for, but the tools and techniques, technologies and approaches you’ll use will just work, regardless of environment.
This is a huge win and step forward. The development tools, the admin tools, the environments and the services all will work in the location of your choice. SQL Server, Windows Server, the pieces and parts will work seamlessly and let you have a common view. Then you get to focus on doing what needs to be done, rather than worrying about how to deploy and manage it.
I kept hearing the term "cloud plug and play" – which on its face is unfortunate frankly, but the intent and goal of plug and play is solid. Perhaps a different term will evolve out of the releases. Being able to use your management studio to work with Azure SQL Database, SQL Server on a 3rd party provider, SQL Server on your local systems… will make it easier to deploy and manage.
I went in pretty "yeah, right" and came away pretty significantly convinced.
Interesting points:
– The concept of a "single pane of glass" was brought up repeatedly (great term) and talks to the fact that your tools can run against the different cloud environments and manage everything from a single location/app. This means much easier management and much more comprehensive view the computing world.
– Security – it was interesting that security seemed to be perceived to be less of a concern for customers. Not that they don’t care, but rather that it’s being dealt with and the concerns are being addressed. I personally still have a huge problem with a few of the specifics, like the fact that we can’t encrypt things yet in the DB (at least not natively/easily) using Azure (rather than an instance) but hopefully that will be addressed.
– An example of easy tools/UI: the Azure tools for creating new sites, load balancing and so-on are very user-friendly and take care of a lot of the manual work for you. If you use other services, you’ll be familiar with the fact that you have to set up load balancers, DNS, configurations and the like. Not so with some of the new tools. They take care of it for you.
Now, this isn’t a sponsored piece. There is a good deal of work to be done and I look forward to working with the software and getting down to reality. BUT, it’s clear that this is the direction and vision behind these areas. If you look beyond the next 60 seconds and start thinking about the right partners to be looking at for IT infrastructure and management, it’s a compelling picture.
What remains to be seen is how quickly people will deploy these tools, these environments and services. What are your plans? Is the cloud (whatever "version" or approach you refer to), something you’re working toward or with? What types of use-case scenarios are you working with that you need to see addressed to be considering the mixed/hybrid type environments?
Shoot me a note, let me know – tomorrow, more on more specific things coming down the pike…