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Vol. 15, #1 - Jan 11, 2010 - Issue #759
Crystal Ball - The Essential 2010 Predictions

This issue of WServerNews is sponsored by
  1. Editor's Corner
    • Crystal Ball - The Essential 2010 Predictions
    • And here they are
    • Quote Of The Year
  2. Admin Toolbox
    • Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without
  3. WServerNews Fave Links
    • This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff.
  4. WServerNews - Product of the Week
    • Active Directory and Group Policy. Preventing Disasters and Blunders.
Active Directory and Group Policy. Preventing Disasters and Blunders.

Watch a webinar by Group Policy MVP Jeremy Moskowitz on how to avoid Active Directory mishaps. Learn how to keep your Active Directory intact and your Group Policy infrastructure humming along. You will learn from Jeremy about how to prevent disasters from accidental deletion, recover from GPO blunders, and learn what you can glean from the logs when a problem occurs. Also, download Active Administrator from ScriptLogic and you can win a mini laptop!
http://www.wservernews.com/100111-Active-Directory

Editor's Corner

Crystal Ball - The Essential 2010 Predictions

Good riddance of 'Terrible 2009'. And as usual, I'm donning my asbestos undies, so you can safely flame my poor behind after reading the new 2010 predictions. Here we go gazing in the crystal for the coming 12 months.

To start off with, also as usual, I'm repeating the tradition of my same New Year's Wish that you have read at this spot for these many years now: "A world without war, crime and insanity, where honest people can flourish, prosper and reach greater heights".

First, how did I do with the predictions for 2009? Not that bad actually. Here are last year's predictions if you want check my 'clairvoyance' LOL:
http://www.wservernews.com/100111-Archives


And here they are

  • IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID - After recovering from its heart attack, things are far from where they should be. There is recovery in some areas, and things are still dicey in others. In 2010, IT will continue to be asked to do more with less. Simplification will be high on the list, and stretching the life of your existing desktops and servers will be one of the priorities.

  • SECURITY - Looking at record-high complexity and cost, combined with a down economy and frozen capital expenditure (capex) budgets, almost all organizations look for simplification. There are too many point products, too many vendors, too many threats and too many compliance frameworks to possibly keep up. The question is, will that simplification be done responsibly?

    2010 Security will be driven by three things: compliance, cloud, and money coming from operational expenditures instead of capex. For IT system- and security admins that means trying to achieve improved security with the same (or perhaps a little more) money compared to last year, while cybercrime has grown up to a point of being quite sophisticated, and the breaches are continuing at record speed. Result: increased stress levels in the security department for the coming 12 months.

  • OPERATING SYSTEMS - Windows Server 2008 R2 got great marks from reviewers and will make major inroads in 2010. It has significant improvements to Hyper-V R2, Server Core, PowerShell scripting, and Terminal Services. It also sports nice-to-have "joined at the hip" features with Win7, such as BranchCache and AppLocker. Server virtualization will continue at the same speed or higher while desktop virtualization will finally explode in 2010. The problems with systems management and security of virtual machines will become (even more) obvious this year, but IT will forge ahead all the same. Win7 will be a blazing success in 2010 despite MS's increasingly daft ad campaigns.

    The Chrome OS will power a new class of 'Anywhere Devices'. Chrome won't be a PC killer, but its network-centric design will power a new array of consumer devices that will be some of the must-have 2010 holiday gifts. Think fast-booting netbooks, ARM-based tablets and connected digital picture frames showing both the latest pictures and the family's current Twitter stream. Chrome OS has the potential to undermine two of Microsoft's most valuable revenue streams: the Windows client business and the Microsoft Office software franchise.

  • HOTTEST SECURITY SKILLS - The hottest security skills employers are seeking for 2010 are: Red teaming/penetration testing, Forensics, Security essentials, Reverse engineering malware, Auditing networks and systems (hands-on testing), Intrusion detection, Security management and leadership, Securing virtual systems, and CISSP certification.

  • 2010 TECH CAREER OUTLOOK - The bad news is that IT jobs took a relatively high hit in job cuts in 2009. The good news is that there are several pockets of demand for skilled IT workers, even if many jobs such as those in support remain under threat. One silver lining: all the big analysts are predicting a single digit upticks in IT spending in 2010. Know cloud and/or virtualization? You got a job. Tech placement firm Robert Half Associates has projected it sees strong demand for network administrators, security managers, and systems engineers. More than a third of IT employers will be hiring full time employees in 2010, according to CareerBuilder.

  • CLOUD - Obviously going to grow like the weeds, but organizations will demand more accountability from cloud providers. Basic cloud services become more a commodity, (and get cheaper) so vendors will differentiate, and come up with simpler pricing models. Expect 'clouds' to start packaging products and services together to target specific uses, vertical markets, and specific compliance requirements, combined with enterprise-caliber SLAs. Examples: data-leak prevention, directory- and authentication services.

    Concerns about data protection will lead to in-cloud encryption -- with you holding the keys. Platform as a Service (PaaS) also by some people called Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS) will start to become big, lead by the release of Microsoft Azure and the millions of eager .NET programmers ready to support it. Microsoft Azure's roll out will impact Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) sales. What we will also see is increased cloud API wars with more API's to enter the fray. Questions about data segregation, backup and secure access will hinder the adoption of cloud applications, especially in regulated industries. Cloud performance monitoring will be as common as rush hour traffic reports.

  • TOP HACKING TARGETS - Adobe Systems' Flash and Acrobat Reader products will become the preferred targets for criminal hackers in 2010, surpassing MS Office applications. Other popular attack surfaces are Firefox, Apple Quicktime and iTunes, Sun Java, Facebook Apps, and Google Chrome which just grabbed the No. 3 browser spot from Safari.

  • IT OPERATIONS - As stated above, desktop virtualization grows fast, as it can squeeze more life out of old systems. Beyond thin-client virtual desktops, companies will begin looking at on-laptop virtual machines as a way to create secure corporate desktops with easier deployment. Use snapshots to revert to a known-secure configuration providing a higher degree of security. (hat-tip to Andreas M. Antonopoulos)

  • HARDWARE - Here comes the iTablet! I hope Apple has learned from the tablet mistakes of others and will come out with one that is more like an upsized iPod Touch. Smartphone users would jump at the chance to have a larger screen -- watching videos, reading books/magazines/newspapers, and surfing the Web. Attacks against mobile devices will explode though. Bluetooth hijacking, mobile browser vulnerabilities and insecure apps will allow attackers to control smartphones and initiate communications that appear to come from users' phones, but are used for attacks.

    Servers get a makeover in 2010, and enterprises will order more intelligent power management and power-saving hardware like dense-blade systems fully loaded with maximum multi-core processing power, memory and I/O capabilities, so that they can have the maximum of virtual machines running on them. Or, for just under $5,000 you will be able to buy six-core, dual-socket servers with 64GB of RAM that will support 50 virtual machines.

    The netbook market will further explode in 2010, despite return rates of up to 30% due to inadequate processing speed. This will give IT a whole new type of headache, but that's why they pay us the big bucks, isn't it? Immediately uninstall that factory installed crapware and bloatware, and run VIPRE on these puppies, your users will love you for it. Those netbooks speed up significantly with VIPRE.

  • VMWARE - VMware will roll either Lifecycle Manager (LCM) or AppSpeed into their Enterprise Plus licensing, making it free, but people still won't know how to use VMware's Lifecycle Manager. VMware will cut its prices, as Hyper-V R2 is out there now, so for a lot of Windows shops, Hyper-V R2 will be the path of least resistance.

  • 2010 BUDGET SURVIVAL TIPS - The things that will get approval are projects designed to cut the cost of doing business. Smaller-scale initiatives that have a quick ROI will be popular with C-level management. An increasing part of what are going to be relatively flat IT budgets will be devoted to streamlining and offloading (SaaS) rather than bulking up internal IT infrastructure. Companies are looking to take out long-term ownership costs, so look for those and propose projects in that direction. Think "faster, better, cheaper" and your job security is rock solid.
WILD-ASS Guesses For 2010
  • Due to its accelerated decline, IE will become a minority browser.
  • Employees will not fall for phishing and social engineering attacks.
  • Google's long-awaited gAmygdala implant, which links Android users' brains wirelessly to their portable devices, will finally be ready for consumer testing. (hat-tip Robert Cringely)
  • Expect to see true self-propagating worms on iPhone and Android systems.
  • The first high profile cloud technology company will go out of business.
  • Google is going to kill off Google Wave, which turns out to be nothing more than a glorified instant-messaging platform.
  • We'll probably see the first big virtualization hack in 2010.
  • Jobs will announce a smarter iPhone 4G. The iPhone is a great device, but it's far from perfect. AT&T will limit iPhone data access through pricing bands or usage caps.
  • Mobile money becomes real. Your smartphone will also be an e-wallet. It's already real in Japan.
  • Wi-Max will finally be here. (They are putting the thing on the roof of our building as we speak, so this one is a shoe-in). Here's our building BTW:
    http://www.wservernews.com/100111-Sunbelt-Building
  • Thousands of small/midsize businesses and enterprises will turn to Skype to reduce phone bill expenses because it can offer an 80% to 90% discount over traditional calling plans in some cases.
  • 3D technology will go mainstream, but not soon! You don't need special glasses to see the epic fail that awaits this not-ready-for-prime-time technology in 2010. (hat-tip Mike Elgan)
  • Pending blow-up: The new advice is be careful about which social networks you invest your time in. Your whole social network could be erased in an instant. And so, too, could URL shorteners, picture hosting sites, blog hosting sites and other services that require the survival of some vulnerable startup in order for your content to function in the future.
  • Botnets will only become more pronounced and before the end of the decade we will see the first 10+ million-large multi-platform botnet that stretches from Windows to Linux to Mac to smartphones, which are able to cross-infect each other via either Bluetooth or other wireless access.


Quote Of The Year

"An open foe is a curse; a pretended friend is worse" -- Poor Richard's Almanac



Warm regards, and thank you for being a WServerNews subscriber. No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced. Please tell your friends about us. They can subscribe here:
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Hope you enjoy this issue of WServerNews! Warm regards, Stu Sjouwerman  |   Email me: [email protected]


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Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without

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WServerNews Fave Links

This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff.



WServerNews - Product of the Week

Active Directory and Group Policy. Preventing Disasters and Blunders.

Watch a webinar by Group Policy MVP Jeremy Moskowitz on how to avoid Active Directory mishaps. Learn how to keep your Active Directory intact and your Group Policy infrastructure humming along. You will learn from Jeremy about how to prevent disasters from accidental deletion, recover from GPO blunders, and learn what you can glean from the logs when a problem occurs. Also, download Active Administrator from ScriptLogic and you can win a mini laptop!
http://www.wservernews.com/100111-Active-Directory-Webinar