SolarWinds just published a compelling survey that shows how technology pros from a range of organizations throughout North America view the changing role of IT. Not surprisingly, the most impactful technology advancement from the recent past is virtualization. Moving forward, emerging technologies expected to disrupt IT the most have to do with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD or BYOx) and mobility. The top critical investments for business in the future will be cloud computing and mobility.
In other news, this morning VMware announced the intended acquisition of AirWatch – the leader in enterprise mobile device management. Quelle coincidence!
Or, as Barb Darrow from GigaOm put it:
One way to prove you’re really into the mobile enterprise, is to spend over a billion on a mobile device management company.
IT pros with expertise in VMware products appear to be very well poised for the future.
The proof of their intent will be to see how well integrated this becomes in their stack. The track record for this sort of thing isn’t so great! It may just wither and die like other acquisitions. I’d think it would be better to find a solution that has a more indepth stack versus a point or best of breed solution.