No longer a journey to the cloud, its now!
Several years ago, the theme at the Microsoft Management Summit was the Journey to the cloud. Today, its NOW.
- Are you ready? – NOW.
- Are you building for the future? – NOW
This year, for the 10 year anniversary of MMS (previously known as the SMS User Conference), Microsoft is back at the Venetian, bigger (sold out with 5000+ attendees) and better than ever. To celebrate that event, Brad Anderson announced general availability of System Center 2012 worldwide.
Key trends for the industry are cloud computing and the consumerization of IT. The first keynote of MMS traditionally presents the server side – cloud computing; the second keynote, which will be April 18, will delve into Configuration Manager and discuss the consumerization of IT.
There are many definitions of cloud computing, and almost as many definitions of private cloud and public cloud. Cloud computing enables you to deploy services that are continuously available and available anywhere and on any device. It gives you continuous services and enables empowerment of consumer devices. The evolution of data center computing is from traditional to virtualized to private cloud and public cloud. Notice that virtualized is not the same as the cloud! Cloud attributes include:
- Pooled resources
- Self-service
- Elastic and flexible
- Usage-based
Microsoft’s definition of private cloud is where a single organization consumes that pooled capability, differing from a public cloud where you will find multiple organizations using the pool. It’s all about increasing agility and making the economic model more efficient.
System Center 2012 is not just about the cloud, but about simplification. For example, Microsoft has reduced licensing for System Center from over 100 SKUs to just two. In releasing System Center as a single product, Microsoft is focusing on the integration between the different components to help you get your job done more simply, without fretting the details of which component you need to use.
Here’s some numbers about System Center 2012:
- 200+ TAP Customers
- 5,500+ organizations in the community evaluation program
- 100,000+ servers in production running the System Center 2012 Release Candidate
- 12 certified configurations for the Microsoft Private Cloud Fast track (This is a set of engineering requirements for Windows Server and System Center. Vendors participating include Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi, NEC, NetApp.)
Is System Center 2012 completely integrated? No, not yet. However, that’s Microsoft’s direction. Look to see a greater emphasis on using the product as whole rather than separate pieces each in their own silo. Starting with a basic unified installer, you also can see Orchestrator “orchestrating” throughout each of the components to deliver automation, Service Manager used for provisioning, Operations Manager sending alerts to Virtual Manager, and App Controller as a portal to the suite.
In other announcements, the MCSE is back with a Private Cloud certification, and Windows Server 8 was officially announced as Windows Server 2012.
The takeaway: In your journey to the cloud, System Center, along with Windows Server 2012, enables you to have your own private cloud.
