Changing the Game in 10 Years

We recently celebrated Envision’s tenth anniversary! This has prompted a lot of reflection on how much has changed since the inception of one of the best Rhode Island-based technology consulting firms. From living in a post-911 world (not to mention a post-Y2K one), to changes in our location, and even changes in our own personal circumstances, little is as it was ten years ago. Technology, of course, has evolved at an ever increasing pace.

As I reflect about how much technology has changed in the past ten years, I ponder on some of my most favorite innovations. The ones that come most readily to mind are some of the simplest. They include flash drives, terminal services, and LCD monitors.

Flash drives are probably my most favorite. How cool is it that you can have gigabytes upon gigabytes of information on a device that’s so small you can put it on your key chain? (Not that you really should) The ease and portability of having this kind of data capacity at your disposal on a device that auto-detects on the system in which you plug it into its USB port is just fantastic. Remember when we thought writable CDs, and then writable DVDs, were cool? Anyone who remembers installing Microsoft Office 95 from 17 floppy disks will echo this sentiment, I’m sure.

Microsoft Terminal Services, or “Remote Desktop”, was certainly a game changer for everyone too. There was a time not so long ago when every time the phone rang, it meant hopping in the car and driving to the client, all to do things that if only we had easy remote access would only take minutes to do. Our reach has been extended in ways that make this a truly enabling technology, allowing us to work more efficiently, effectively, and in a more geographically unlimited manner. Sure, there were always methods of remote access into networks, and enterprise networks usually had the best ones. But from the perspective of being able to access and support almost any node in a Windows-based environment as easily and cheaply as Remote Desktop allows, you just can’t beat what this has done for us.

And then there are LCD monitors. Flat panels. Space saving, energy saving, back saving. Remembering the days of schlepping hardware to clients for network and PC installs in the back of my car invokes memories of awkwardly finding the most optimal way of cramming as many huge 17” CRT monitor boxes into the back seat of my ’94 Acura as possible. It wasn’t many. But despite the obvious enhancements in portability and energy efficiency that LCD monitors provide, my favorite aspect of LCD technology is the simple fact that I no longer have to spend almost my entire day at my desk with cathode rays beaming through my corneas into to the back of my brain. Yay science!

Despite how cool and far reaching these three small changes in technology are, hands down, my most favorite game-changing technological evolution is easily the technology of Virtualization. Server Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Appliance Virtualization, you name it: you just can’t beat what Virtualization is doing for businesses that run on x86-based computing architectures (that is, almost ALL of them)! From the ease of administration, to the green computing aspects, the consolidating ability, to the flexibility that it brings, virtualizing your corporate computing environment enables capabilities that we would certainly have marveled at ten years ago. Heck, we marvel at it today! As far as game-changers go, the technology of virtualization is the biggest thing to come along in most of our careers to date. The ability to make running server operating systems dynamically portable, while running, and able to be backed up, cloned, cataloged, and deployed as easily as is allowed by products of the likes from VMware, is nothing short of “miraculous”. When you see virtualization work in a well-implemented environment for the first time, you’re tempted to not believe what you are seeing. How can what just happened truly have happened? And the ramifications for the protection of business continuity, uptime, flexibility, and disaster recovery are extreme. Never before in our practice’s history have we been so excited about the emergence of a technology, and its accessibility to all levels of our clients (not just higher-end enterprise environments) as we are today.

To learn more about virtualization and how Envision can help you reap the benefits of virtualizing your corporate computing infrastructure, go to http://www.envisionsuccess.net/networking/virtualization.aspx

posted by Brent