The Quiet Before the Next IT Revolution

snydeq writes: Now that the technologies behind our servers and networks have stabilized, IT can look forward to a different kind of constant change, writes Paul Venezia. "In IT, we are actually seeing a bit of stasis. I don't mean that the IT world isn't moving at the speed of light — it is — but the technologies we use in our corporate data centers have progressed to the point where we can leave them be for the foreseeable future without worry that they will cause blocking problems in other areas of the infrastructure. What all this means for IT is not that we can finally sit back and take a break after decades of turbulence, but that we can now focus less on the foundational elements of IT and more on the refinements. ... In essence, we have finally built the transcontinental railroad, and now we can use it to completely transform our Wild West."

Comments

A rather simplistic hardware-centric view

[msobkow]

The article is a rather simplistic hardware-centric viewpoint. It doesn't even begin to touch on the areas where IT has always struggled: design, coding, debugging, and deployment. Instead it completely ignores the issue of software development, and instead bleats about how we can "roll back" servers with the click of a button in a virtual environment.

Which, of course, conveniently ignores the fact that someone has to write the code that runs in those virtual servers, debug it, test it, integrate it, package it, and ship it. Should it be an upgrade to an existing service/server, add in the overhead of designing, coding, and testing the database migration scripts for it, and coordinating the deployments of application virtual servers with the database servers.

Are things easier than they used to be? Perhaps for they basic system administration tasks.

But those have never been where the bulk of time and budget go.

Not paying attention?

[felixrising]

I assume you are talking about the hardware... because once you have a "private cloud", the next step is moving away from setting up servers and configuring the applications manually, and getting into full on DevOps style dynamically scaling virtual workloads, that are completely (VM and their applications, the network configuration including "micro networks" and firewall rules) stood up and torn down dynamically according to the demands of the customers accessing the systems.. those same workloads can move anywhere from your own infrastructure to leased private infrastructure to public infrastructure without any input from you... of course, none of this is new... but it's certainly a paradigm shift in the way we manage and view our infrastructure... hardly something static or settled. Really this is a fast moving area that is hard to keep up with.

Re:Horseshit

[davester666]

alternately, it will soon be time for the pendulum to swing back to "we've got to have everything in-house, these security breaches are killing us" and "dumb terminals and having everything in the 'cloud' is killing productivity when the cloud is down, we need real apps so users can work even when the cloud doesn't"

Re:If you didn't know what you were doing ...

[Iamthecheese]

Programming in good code isn't hard at all. What's hard is programming well when you're on the fifth "all hands on deck" rush job this year, you have two years of experience and no training because your company was too cheap to pay a decent wage or train you, a humiliating and useless performance review is just 'round the corner, and you doubt anything you type will end up in the final product. The problem is a widespread cultural one. When IT companies are willing to spend the time and money for consistent quality that's when they'll start to put out quality products.