Microsoft skills up IT pros for jobs in the cloud You can tell that cloud computing is huge by the number of certifications and training programmes and user groups setting out their stalls. We have spotted two this week, a vendor training initiative, and a strong-arm grouping for IT security practitioners. Say hello to the Microsoft Virtual Academy, a free training facility …
lol
Personally I just don't think the two things go together.
Ask yourself:
1] Will my cloud provider tell me where my data is being held (amazon allegedly won't?)
2] Does the location of data in the cloud comply with data protection/data export regulations?
3] If you’re fortunate to know what country your data is in, what legal jurisdiction does that country have over your data?
4] What if a cloud service has been procured by the criminal element, you know, hosting a piracy site or extreme porn etc. What happens if your data happens to be on that same storage block, and the local law bust in and take those servers away?
5] Fundamentally, any business has a liablity for the security and safety of confidential information that they hold, especially PII.... if they hand that over to a cloud service - and data theft incident occurs - what happens then?
6] Surely, moving your data from say a small private UK data centre and out to the cloud will exponentially increase the potential attack vectors and footprint to aim at.
Finally, in my own view, a cloud service where you KNOW WHERE YOUR DATA LIVES isn't cloud anyway, that's just hype. That would then be called "managed hosting" so the point is moot. And if you DON'T, then I would suggest it is at best careless and unethical, at worst illegal, to have private, personal or commercial in confidence data held within "the clouds" – god knows where.
There is one thing I would use the cloud for - for app hosting of non-sensitive data. Or to buy in a quick burst of CPU for a specific task. That makes sense.
I see the cloud as the start of the end for IT professionals. Once businesses start putting their systems onto the cloud there's going to be next to no support needed. It will all be done at the host.
The physical PCs will become dumb terminals and will have a hugely cut down OS whereby replacing the PC will be far easier than having it fixed. Most likely there will be a class of PCs called 'cloud optimised' which are preconfigured to a cloud supplier and all the end user does is hook it up to the mains, the router and then add their online details and the PC is then ready to go.
And then there's a software sales side. Again, everything will be provided in an 'all inclusive price' online so your not going to have a chance to sell anything.
I can see a lot of people out of a job within 10 years once this becomes main stream. And no, im not going to spend £k's on a certificate that will ultimately make me redundant.
I agree that the whole could push is a push for big companies to outsource their server ops to India but I don't see that happening any time in the next 10 years. With every Telco in the US trying to push up the cost of data links, it will have a chilling effect on the cloud push.
Also as mentioned above, I am sure once companies realize they are are having their precious data sitting in a data center in India, and there are the inevitable data scandals where precious data ends up in the public sphere... they'll slam into full reverse and go back to re hosting locally with the newer generation of low power Atom servers.
Not one to turn down any kind of free training I've been getting my hands dirty but found myself getting increasingly annoyed at the pronunciation of Azure. So much so that I even started to doubt my own understanding of the word.
I had to double check just to make sure I wasn't going mental when on one video it gets pronounced as See-quel eyez-share (soft on the 'eye' more emphasis on the 'z'). Seequel annoys me at the best of times, but I know it's just my personal pet hate, preferring S.Q.L. but couple it with izshur and you simply distract me so much I can't concentrate of the subject matter.
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