Two years ago, after the IOUG Collaborate conference, Steve Lemme and I sat down and discussed what we felt were the hot areas we should focus on for the Oracle user community.   We focused on open source, virtualization and Cloud Computing.  We launched a number of initiatives and had a number of virtualization and open source activities in the last two IOUG Collaborate conferences.

So it's been an amazing journey watching the continued explosion of open source, the Cloud and the use of virtualization in data centers this last year.  I've been talking to a number of CIOs and database managers who are discussing their challenges in moving to the Cloud and finding the necessary expertise to use virtualization to reduce costs, simplify management as well as increase the speed of deploying database servers, web servers and development environments.  It's also apparent that a lot of groups (i.e. DBAs) do not understand cloud technology and virtualization, so they fear them and have very inaccurate perspectives of them.  Two very important areas of cloud technology are security and compliance.   There are a lot of companies on the fast track to develop their expertise so they can successfully implement Cloud Computing.

As Oracle Open World draws near,  look for implementing Cloud technology and virtualization to be two very hot topics.  In the last year when teaching database server classes I always had a number of students that were always excited to talk about how they were deploying VMware and virtualization solutions in their database environments.

So if you are looking to find two areas that are growing very fast and have a lot of excitement and momentum around them, then Cloud Computing and Virtualization are the two key areas to look into.  With the growth of Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructures, VMworld 2010 will be the key cloud event of the year to attend.    

Labels: Cloud Computing and Virtualization