The year 2014 will see VMware and Cisco continue as "frenemies", where VMware NSX and Cisco ACI battle it out in many large joint accounts, predicts Christian Mohn, senior consultant at EVRY Consulting.
"The software-defined networking market will continue to evolve, and a lot of third parties are joining the party with their integrations," states Mohn. "Automation will be big in 2014, and perhaps the often talked about private cloud scenario will finally start to materialise in small and medium-sized businesses."
According to Mohn, most IT administrations really want to offer that kind of scalability to their internal customers, but have been unable to do so. 2014 might just be the year that more businesses take the step into the cloud era, and perhaps the cloud buzzword will finally have some merit beyond the largest enterprises.
"VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V will continue to dominate the server virtualisation market, adds Mohn.
Jason Helmick, senior technologist at Concentrated Technology, believes the hybrid cloud hasn't moved as fast as expected, but having the ability to scale off-premises for performance and disaster recovery, and scale back to on-premises when desired, won't be ignored in 2014. It's too easy, too cost effective and too smart a direction.
"Microsoft and VMware will continue their battle for world dominance and IT proffesionals will benefit from the competition. VMworld was buzzing with new advances in network and storage virtualisation and I bet IT professionals are going to spend some very enjoyable time in 2014 utilising those new capabilities."
Helmick adds that Microsoft is getting both small and large companies into Office 365 (specifically Exchange Online), removing the hassle and expense of on-premises messaging solutions.
"As an Exchange implementation expert, my days are numbered, since 2014 will see a massive migration to Office 365," he says.
He predicts also, that cross-platform virtualisation management is a requirement for 2014. As Microsoft nibbles at VMware's heels, Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager are entering the network.
"Even die-hard VMware supporters are finding small pockets of departmental virtualisation and the occasional non-mission critical server on Hyper-V. For the Microsoft hardliners, you are not going to keep VMware - still the leader in virtualisation - out of your network. This is a cross-platform world, and we need to embrace it," concludes Helmick.
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