How Microsoft’s cloud push will affect your job

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

Microsoft is going cloud — or already has gone cloud, depending on whom you talk to. What’s not as well understood is how this shift will affect people who work with enterprise Microsoft systems. Will this mean a significant change to, or even elimination of, your job?  Unlike AWS (Amazon Web Services), Google, and IBM, Microsoft is relocating its core products, such as operating systems and databases, to the cloud.

AWS does not have existing on-premises systems, so AWS’s movement to the cloud is for new platforms. As with AWS, IBM offers a new cloud (via its SoftLayer acquisition) that doesn’t replicate its existing enterprise technology. The same can be said about Google’s cloud offering. So Microsoft is a unique case…

A move to Microsoft Azure means that how you use Microsoft technology, both in the cloud and on-premises, certainly will change. Chances are that fewer SQL server DBAs will be needed, and fewer people will be needed to maintain Microsoft’s servers and keep things running in its cloud, although the skills required will be largely the same. Otherwise, there’s little reason to move from on-premises Microsoft servers to cloud ones; Microsoft’s play here is cost reduction through efficiency, not new business value through new capabilities…

See more at: http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/how-microsofts-cloud-push-will-affect-your-job-242560#sthash.R8XBaoGi.dpuf

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