Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference
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@Kelly said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
I'm not being specific because I don't exactly know what it is I want, I just know what it is not. In my mind a systems (very generally used) is a discussion or training on how to use a system and what goes into it. Those are great, but not what I'm looking for at this point. I want to learn about and talk to other people about how to see 5-10 years down the road and be able to position my company's systems so that we are ready to make the next leap forward.
5-10 years is an eternity in tech terms. That said, I look at my SMB, and very little has actually changed for us in 10 years though.
What has changed:
locally hosted LOB app moved to cloud provider
Changed from Lotus Notes to Exchange
Changed from Windows XP to Windows 10
Changed from Palm Pilots/Android/Blackberry/iPhone to Android/iPhone only
Changed from PRI to SIP
Changed from dual ring fiber to cable modem
Changed from 2003 server to 2012R2But the root of the way we do business really didn't change. My users still use an email client and a web browser 99.9% of the time. We still have network shares. Still have on prem AD.
In looking forward:
I'd like to:
move to O365
kill network shares and move to LANLess setup (SharePoint or NextCloud type solution)
use MDM style management of workstations (perhaps SALT)
Phones that can work literally anywhere (seems unlikely) -
@NerdyDad said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
How can you know what is coming 5-10 years when your CEO/owner can't see past 5? Shouldn't we base the demands of IT on the needs of the company/organization?
IT is the axis of business and tech. The business axis we need from the CEO. but the tech axis we need from the industry and from vendors. So while @Kelly can't use a conference like this to foresee a business axis, in theory he can use it for the tech axis. He still needs to get the CEO to provide info and combine the two himself to be useful to his company, but a conference, if done well and I hope that MC does this, will provide that kind of insight for the tech axis of the IT profession.
And I think things like the LANless talk, FOG computing and the State of the Art talks go down this road as to what the next decade of management looks like.
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@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
5-10 years is an eternity in tech terms. That said, I look at my SMB, and very little has actually changed for us in 10 years though.
Ten years maybe, but five years is not. And if you step away from vendor roles to just industry ones, ten years isn't that long. We have essentially nothing important today that we didn't know ten years ago. We know new things coming ten years from now, but what we have today is totally predictable from ten years ago. IT doesn't change as fast as we feel.
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@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
And I think things like the LANless talk, FOG computing and the State of the Art talks go down this road as to what the next decade of management looks like.
can you give a preview on what State of the Art will cover?
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@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
5-10 years is an eternity in tech terms. That said, I look at my SMB, and very little has actually changed for us in 10 years though.
Ten years maybe, but five years is not. And if you step away from vendor roles to just industry ones, ten years isn't that long. We have essentially nothing important today that we didn't know ten years ago. We know new things coming ten years from now, but what we have today is totally predictable from ten years ago. IT doesn't change as fast as we feel.
True - but won't it be amazing if MS doesn't have a desktop OS in 10 years
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@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
What has changed:
locally hosted LOB app moved to cloud providerNTG was doing this in the 1990s. That this was the new paradigm was well established by then. It was 1999, 18 years ago, when Microsoft published their DNA paper on SaaS and the future of application design. That's why we say that anyone not doing that on MS tech is clueless, because MS said it was the path forward that long ago.
That's a two decade change, not a one decade. And even two decades ago, it was well established.
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@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
5-10 years is an eternity in tech terms. That said, I look at my SMB, and very little has actually changed for us in 10 years though.
Ten years maybe, but five years is not. And if you step away from vendor roles to just industry ones, ten years isn't that long. We have essentially nothing important today that we didn't know ten years ago. We know new things coming ten years from now, but what we have today is totally predictable from ten years ago. IT doesn't change as fast as we feel.
True - but won't it be amazing if MS doesn't have a desktop OS in 10 years
But they will. It might be free. It might not be important. but they will have it. There is no doubt.
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@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
And I think things like the LANless talk, FOG computing and the State of the Art talks go down this road as to what the next decade of management looks like.
can you give a preview on what State of the Art will cover?
part of the hint is in the name. The future of systems, is state.
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Let me give this another go, and see if I can be any clearer. There are people out there already doing the things that will be normal for everyone else in 5-10 years (especially SMB since it generally takes longer to filter down). I want to hear what they're doing and why. Maybe it is the State of the Art discussion, but having only one voice speaking makes it narrow because of human limitation. Maybe what I want doesn't exist.
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@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
What has changed:
locally hosted LOB app moved to cloud providerNTG was doing this in the 1990s. That this was the new paradigm was well established by then. It was 1999, 18 years ago, when Microsoft published their DNA paper on SaaS and the future of application design. That's why we say that anyone not doing that on MS tech is clueless, because MS said it was the path forward that long ago.
That's a two decade change, not a one decade. And even two decades ago, it was well established.
Let me ask this - The application was web based, just locally hosted in our own datacenter. So, where we still so bad off? Granted, perhaps risk wise we should have been in a reputable DC, but let's look past that for this question.
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@Kelly said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
Let me give this another go, and see if I can be any clearer. There are people out there already doing the things that will be normal for everyone else in 5-10 years (especially SMB since it generally takes longer to filter down). I want to hear what they're doing and why. Maybe it is the State of the Art discussion, but having only one voice speaking makes it narrow because of human limitation. Maybe what I want doesn't exist.
You mean having a single conference speaker on a topic rather than a round table type thing?
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@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
What has changed:
locally hosted LOB app moved to cloud providerNTG was doing this in the 1990s. That this was the new paradigm was well established by then. It was 1999, 18 years ago, when Microsoft published their DNA paper on SaaS and the future of application design. That's why we say that anyone not doing that on MS tech is clueless, because MS said it was the path forward that long ago.
That's a two decade change, not a one decade. And even two decades ago, it was well established.
Let me ask this - The application was web based, just locally hosted in our own datacenter. So, where we still so bad off? Granted, perhaps risk wise we should have been in a reputable DC, but let's look past that for this question.
Sounds like it was "ready" to move to hosted. NTG was doing hosted apps though, in that mode, in the 1990s.
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@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Kelly said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
Let me give this another go, and see if I can be any clearer. There are people out there already doing the things that will be normal for everyone else in 5-10 years (especially SMB since it generally takes longer to filter down). I want to hear what they're doing and why. Maybe it is the State of the Art discussion, but having only one voice speaking makes it narrow because of human limitation. Maybe what I want doesn't exist.
You mean having a single conference speaker on a topic rather than a round table type thing?
Round table would be fine. I'm not biased for or against. I'd just like to hear what forward leaning organizations that see IT as a competitive advantage are doing to keep that edge. The specifics of my comment about the State of the Art is that while you are forward leaning you are one person and are thus limited in perspective.
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@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
What has changed:
locally hosted LOB app moved to cloud providerNTG was doing this in the 1990s. That this was the new paradigm was well established by then. It was 1999, 18 years ago, when Microsoft published their DNA paper on SaaS and the future of application design. That's why we say that anyone not doing that on MS tech is clueless, because MS said it was the path forward that long ago.
That's a two decade change, not a one decade. And even two decades ago, it was well established.
Let me ask this - The application was web based, just locally hosted in our own datacenter. So, where we still so bad off? Granted, perhaps risk wise we should have been in a reputable DC, but let's look past that for this question.
Sounds like it was "ready" to move to hosted. NTG was doing hosted apps though, in that mode, in the 1990s.
Hosted, not hosted, didn't change the way the application worked. So I'm not really sure where we are going in the discussion.
One reason to keep it local at the time is the amount of scanned files being sent to the system. A 10/10 meg connection suited us for the entire lifespan of that product because there was little to no file uploads that weren't onsite. We would have needed a much larger pipe if we were doing file uploads to a hosted solution.
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@Kelly said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Kelly said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
Let me give this another go, and see if I can be any clearer. There are people out there already doing the things that will be normal for everyone else in 5-10 years (especially SMB since it generally takes longer to filter down). I want to hear what they're doing and why. Maybe it is the State of the Art discussion, but having only one voice speaking makes it narrow because of human limitation. Maybe what I want doesn't exist.
You mean having a single conference speaker on a topic rather than a round table type thing?
Round table would be fine. I'm not biased for or against. I'd just like to hear what forward leaning organizations that see IT as a competitive advantage are doing to keep that edge. The specifics of my comment about the State of the Art is that while you are forward leaning you are one person and are thus limited in perspective.
I suppose quite frankly - I too would like to hear this. I visited Dropbox in San Fran two years ago. There was very little Windows there, Mac's everywhere. Cisco IP phones everywhere.
I was told there was no MS AD. So I was wondering - what did the use for central authentication? Is central authentication even needed? Do we stop worrying about that, and only manage access at the resources themselves? OK - fine - but now you have potentially dozens of authentications to manage and maintain.
Moving on to files, Obviously they were using Dropbox to move files around, and as I mentioned, I would like to move away from file shares - but people are difficult at best to move to different ways of doing things - and NextCloud/SharePoint via a web interface are horribly inefficient compared to typical network shares. Only through integration of the applications with things like NextCloud/Sharepoint/Dropbox are you able to move away from the traditional shares, without a full on revolt and production efficiency drop. -
@Kelly said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Kelly said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
Let me give this another go, and see if I can be any clearer. There are people out there already doing the things that will be normal for everyone else in 5-10 years (especially SMB since it generally takes longer to filter down). I want to hear what they're doing and why. Maybe it is the State of the Art discussion, but having only one voice speaking makes it narrow because of human limitation. Maybe what I want doesn't exist.
You mean having a single conference speaker on a topic rather than a round table type thing?
Round table would be fine. I'm not biased for or against. I'd just like to hear what forward leaning organizations that see IT as a competitive advantage are doing to keep that edge. The specifics of my comment about the State of the Art is that while you are forward leaning you are one person and are thus limited in perspective.
Sort of, except it's one person who specializes in this area, moreso than pretty much anyone in the industry - IT futurists essentially don't exist - and someone who talks to top people throughout the industry to accumulate opinions and ideas on this. So while it is one presenter (actually three in this case) it's not like one person's opinion.
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@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
What has changed:
locally hosted LOB app moved to cloud providerNTG was doing this in the 1990s. That this was the new paradigm was well established by then. It was 1999, 18 years ago, when Microsoft published their DNA paper on SaaS and the future of application design. That's why we say that anyone not doing that on MS tech is clueless, because MS said it was the path forward that long ago.
That's a two decade change, not a one decade. And even two decades ago, it was well established.
Let me ask this - The application was web based, just locally hosted in our own datacenter. So, where we still so bad off? Granted, perhaps risk wise we should have been in a reputable DC, but let's look past that for this question.
Sounds like it was "ready" to move to hosted. NTG was doing hosted apps though, in that mode, in the 1990s.
Hosted, not hosted, didn't change the way the application worked. So I'm not really sure where we are going in the discussion.
One reason to keep it local at the time is the amount of scanned files being sent to the system. A 10/10 meg connection suited us for the entire lifespan of that product because there was little to no file uploads that weren't onsite. We would have needed a much larger pipe if we were doing file uploads to a hosted solution.
This was your point, you said that LOB moved to the cloud provider. I was pointing out that that was a common, standard thing long before that point.
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@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@scottalanmiller said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
@Dashrender said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
What has changed:
locally hosted LOB app moved to cloud providerNTG was doing this in the 1990s. That this was the new paradigm was well established by then. It was 1999, 18 years ago, when Microsoft published their DNA paper on SaaS and the future of application design. That's why we say that anyone not doing that on MS tech is clueless, because MS said it was the path forward that long ago.
That's a two decade change, not a one decade. And even two decades ago, it was well established.
Let me ask this - The application was web based, just locally hosted in our own datacenter. So, where we still so bad off? Granted, perhaps risk wise we should have been in a reputable DC, but let's look past that for this question.
Sounds like it was "ready" to move to hosted. NTG was doing hosted apps though, in that mode, in the 1990s.
Hosted, not hosted, didn't change the way the application worked. So I'm not really sure where we are going in the discussion.
One reason to keep it local at the time is the amount of scanned files being sent to the system. A 10/10 meg connection suited us for the entire lifespan of that product because there was little to no file uploads that weren't onsite. We would have needed a much larger pipe if we were doing file uploads to a hosted solution.
This was your point, you said that LOB moved to the cloud provider. I was pointing out that that was a common, standard thing long before that point.
well, it was moved because out old vendor killed the product, and we moved to a cloud provider, not a self managed solution. More like an O365 solution, everything managed by the vendor.
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@Dashrender In regards to cloud shares/storage, I picked up an eval of Sharefile along the way and its probably a better developed product than anything I have used thus far. Onedrive, Dropbox, etc cant touch it.
I am looking forward to seeing Nextcloud evolve.
Sorry a little off topic...
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@Kelly said in Vendor Neutral IT Strategist Conference:
Round table would be fine. I'm not biased for or against. I'd just like to hear what forward leaning organizations that see IT as a competitive advantage are doing to keep that edge.
I've been in that spot before. Looking back it didn't really matter what people were saying about what we might be doing in 5 years. - I was waiting for vaporware to materialize and hardware manufactures to SKU stuff so I could buy it.
At this point in my career, if I know that a manufacture has plans to come out with a new laptop docking station and I can plan my laptop purchases around that, I feel like I'm doing ok.
