Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019. Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed by Andy Syrewicze, Technical Evangelist, MVP and VMware vExpert, Altaro
The Year of the Container, Hypervisors Slide Under the Hood, and More People Using More Clouds
It's quite normal this time of year to keep a steady eye on
the future. Our crystal ball can be a good measure of key technologies and
industry movements to keep an eye on in the coming year. Not only does this
help companies determine what strategic changes they need to make from an IT
perspective, it also highlights areas where staff may need to train up and grow
to accommodate those changes.
From where I sit in the industry, I've always looked at
things through the lens of IT Operations, and Infrastructure, and things sure
are changing.
The Year of the
Container: It's no secret that Docker and containerization technologies
such as Kubernetes have taken the industry by storm.
Something that was once primarily intended for developers has now found its way
into the hearts and minds of operations folks. IT Departments everywhere are
finding the benefits of
containerization and it's natural complimenting nature with cloud
technologies too good to pass up. We no longer live in a world where a workload
lives within the 4 corners of an office building. IT Needs are ever changing,
and the ability to run a containerized workload, quickly, anywhere, on any
platform has brought operations engineers flocking to companies like Docker and
Kubernetes, and the trend shows no sign of slowing down.
Hypervisors Slide
Under the Hood: It's hard for me to admit this one because the hypervisor
has been my bread and butter for many years, but with the shift to containers
and microservices, the hypervisor is starting to get sucked down under the hood
in some platforms. Think about it, it's a commoditized technology that is now
easily automated and manageable from other areas of the technology stack.
Take Microsoft Azure
Stack for instance. This self-contained "cloud in a can" (My term,
not Microsoft's) essentially drops an instance of Azure inside of your
datacenter. Hyper-V is there, it's a key component of the stack, but you work
with it in a secondary nature via Azure Resource Manager. There is no ability
to access Hyper-V or use its management tools to manage it directly. Nor is it
needed. Azure stack was designed and built to be managed and consumed like a
public cloud, and meticulous management of the hypervisor doesn't fit in well
with the cloud model. So, while containers rise to the top, hypervisors will
continue to fade deeper into the stack.
More People Using
More Clouds: One of the key benefits of containerization again is its
natural synergy with cloud services. A container can literally
run on just about any platform in any cloud. As more workloads get
moved to this deployment model, the easier it will be for businesses to deploy
into the cloud, and not just a single cloud! Many businesses have found the
need to deploy workloads in multiple clouds as the needs of the business
change.
In short, containerization will help drive cloud adoption to
multiple cloud platforms due to its flexibility.
IT has always been a fast moving, and fast-paced industry,
and the pace is accelerating! Make use of the training and tools available out
there and you'll be able to roll with the times and take advantages of
tomorrow's technology today.
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About the Author
Andy Syrewicze, Technical Evangelist, Altaro
Andy is a 15+ year IT pro specializing in Virtualization, Storage, Cloud, and Infrastructure. By day he’s a Technical Evangelist for Altaro, leading technical content and pre-sales. By night he shares his IT knowledge online or over a cold beer. He holds the Microsoft MVP award in Cloud and Datacenter Management, and is one of few who is also a VMware vExpert.