Friday, May 19, 2017

‘Mobile First–Cloud First’ Strategy – How About System Center – 01 – Kickoff


Advice to the reader
This posting is part of a series of articles. In order to get a full grasp of it, I strongly advise you to start at the beginning of it.

Other postings in the same series:
02 – SCCM
03 – SCOrch
04 – SCDPM
05 – SCSM
06 – SCVMM
07 – SCOM


In this new series of blog postings I’ll write about the effect of Microsoft’s ‘Mobile First – Cloud First’ strategy on the System Center stack.
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This posting is the first of this series.

‘Put your money where your mouth is’
This phrase is most certainly at play when looking at Microsoft’s ‘new’ Mobile First – Cloud First strategy. And not just that, Microsoft has given the phrase ‘Put your money where your mouth is’ a whole new dimension of depth and breadth. Simply because their investments in the cloud (Azure, Office 365, Windows Intune and so on) and everything related, are unprecedented.
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Azure regions are added on almost quarterly basis, while a single Azure region requires a multi billion dollar investment. Azure on itself is growing on a weekly basis. New services are added whereas existing ones are modified or extended.

It’s quite safe to say that Microsoft’s Mobile First – Cloud First strategy isn’t marketing mumbo jumbo, but the real deal. Microsoft is changing from a software vendor to a service delivery provider with a global reach. On top of it all Microsoft is also capable of delivering the cloud to goverments, adhering to specific laws and regulations.

The speed of alle these changes is enormous. Like an oil tanker turning into a speed boat while changing course and direction. As such one could say that Microsoft is rebuilding itself from the ground up. Nothing is left untouched, even the foundations are rebuild or removed when deemed unnecessary.

As a direct result many well known Microsoft products are revamped. Especially products which originally had a strong on-premise focus, like Windows Server. Now these same products are far more easier to integrate with Azure based services. As such these products are growing into a more hybrid model, enabling customers to reap the benefits of both worlds: on-premise and the (public) cloud.

How about System Center?
For sure, this massive reinvention of how Microsoft does business is affecting the System Center stack as well. Many components of the System Center stack date from the so called ‘pre-cloud era’, the days when the cloud was nothing but a buzz word. Most workloads and enterprise environments were located in on-premise datacenters. Not much if anything at all was running in any cloud, whether public or private.

Mind you, this is outside SCVMM of course.

The source code of many System Center stack components still reflect that outdated approach. So when Microsoft would think about turning the System Center stack into a more hybrid solution, much of that source code would require serious rewrites. Without huge investments this can’t be done.
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Why this new series of blog postings:
So this brings us to the main question on which this series of postings is based: Where does System Center fit into the new ‘Mobile First – Cloud First’ strategy? At this moment the System Center stack looks to be isolated compared to other Microsoft based solutions.

In this series of blog postings I’ll take a look per System Center component and how it relates to the new Microsoft. Also I’ll write about available Azure based alternatives (if any). The last posting of this series will be about the System Center stack as a whole and whether it still deserves a place in the brave new world, powered by Azure.

I can tell you, many things are happening with the System Center stack. Most of them in plain sight but some of them hidden from your direct line of sight. Just like an iceberg…
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So stay tuned. In following articles of this series I’ll show you where and how to look in order to see the whole iceberg…

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