Daniel and I have attended the Microsoft Tech Summit in Milan earlier this week. Overall it was a pretty good event, especially taking into account that it was free. The keynote was quite interesting, so much so, that I thought I’d share my takeaways.
- Focus on solutions (not individual components) and add value
This, for me, is the message that came across most clearly. Focus on helping your business, brining value by enabling new processes and possibilities. Don’t waste your valuable time upgrading the umpteenth server or migrating from v14 to v15. Move to the cloud where it makes sense and free-up resources.
- Infrastructure continues to lose importance and platform services get more important
Sure, there is a huge uptake in IaaS but that can only be an interim solution. If any organization is going to really benefit from using cloud services, the managing of virtual machines (just like on-prem) should not be part of the equation.
- Skills change!
In a modern world, the IT pro’s focus can no longer be a single nitty-gritty technical thing. Many of us almost ignored the business’ evloving needs while pursuing mastery in that single discipline. In this increasingly cloud-first world, we will have to change. Radically.
- GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation
This thing is coming and fast. The business must be prepared and IT can should play a key role in implementing the right tools and policies to follow the regulation. Oh, and tell me about changing skills ;)
- Cloud adoption in Italy is above average and growing
It was really interesting to see that the economic turbulences were a driver for cloud adoption in Italy. A great customer story with a well-known, Italian media outlet showed how a sensible approach to cloud technologies could both, enable exciting new scenarios and drive down cost.
Sessions and slide decks can be downloaded from the Tech Community
What do you think about the changing role of IT? Leave a comment below!
Tom