Page 5 - COMPASS, Q2 2017

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THE JOURNEY THROUGH THE CLOUD
You can’t do much these days without seeing or hearing about the cloud. You hear it in IT, marketing, sales and even your cars, appli- ances and many other gadgets. It’s hard to escape all of the cloud buzz that’s been going on for some time now. The cloud means many different things to many different people. For some it’s simply an afterthought, a utility that should always be there without much thought. But for IT professionals, it’s a whole lot more.
The compute behind the cloud, after all, is physical equipment. It may not be on-premises, owned by or physically accessible by you, but it is hardware. What makes it the cloud are the options we have now to utilize and access this compute. We all remember the days of being in the cold datacenter racking and stacking switches and servers. Heck, I remember racking tower servers spec’ing CD drives that would work horizontally. Every day, we would be in the datacenter. Some of us even had our desk in the datacenter.
That all changed. The idea shifted to a well-run datacenter where you didn’t have to go inside. Where you could accomplish every- thing from a console. Where the only reason you went into the datacenter was for power issues or physical gear upgrades. For me, this was even before VMware. In some sense, we all were cre- ating this “cloud” concept even before virtual servers. No need to touch or even see the compute, just access it remotely and make it work. It didn’t matter the datacenter was 15 feet away, we took pride in the fact we didn’t even have to open that door.
Enter VMware. The company takes this concept to the next level to create the cloud we know today, and the industry has grown and continues to evolve. So, too, has the role of the IT professional.
Just like back in the day, we no longer need to physically touch the equipment. And now we don’t have to own it, either. Most will have a combination of owning or renting compute, but options are there and it’s up to you to decide what’s best for your business environment.
For most, the “cloud” is the buzzword, but for IT it’s better defined as SDDC. IT profes- sionals need to keep skills fresh and to stay relevant in the IT department of tomorrow. You can do this by learning new technologies, such as NSX, hyper-converged, vSAN, EUC and looking at new secondary storage solu- tions for the modern world. VMUG can help with this training by providing access to demo software downloads (now including NSX), UserCons, virtual events and online communities. We all want to help each other, and the community is a great place to ask questions and share your knowledge.
Everywhere things are changing. What will always be here is the community to support your journey through the cloud and beyond.
Brad Tompkins
VMUG CEO
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