Mohammad Darab

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: David Klee (b | t): 

Mohammad: Do you think people who dismiss the cloud as a “fad” or just don’t take it serious enough to learn about it (i.e. Azure, AWS, etc), will be in a tough spot to find a job 5 years from now?

David: I see SQL Server technologies evolving in numerous directions, but the overarching theme will be cloud. Just look at the current release cycles for on-prem SQL Server. It’s a compiled and boxed version of the SQL Server features that are already released in Azure SQL Database in the previous months. Even the Linux release is (IMHO) partly because cloud-based SQL Server platforms are looking for a smaller footprint operating system. The bigger question for me is – are your applications ready for the shift? Most business-critical app vendors that I see are not yet even supporting SQL Server 2016, let alone newer versions. The limitations of DBaaS also are too much for many of these applications. But… they’ll get there, and you must be ready. Continue reading “Interview – David Klee”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Joe Sack (li | t):

Mohammad: Do you think people who dismiss the cloud as a “fad” or just don’t take it serious enough to learn about it (i.e. Azure, AWS, etc), will be in a tough spot to find a job 5 years from now?

Joe: Well, first I should mention I work for a company that sells Cloud services (I work on the Azure SQL Database team, QP focus), so I’m not an unbiased source. Disclosures aside, I have been working with SQL Server since 1997 and I definitely see the shift happening with customers – particularly for hybrid scenarios, with a mix of on-prem, IaaS, and PaaS. As for readiness – a few years ago if there was a Cloud session at a conference, it risked being very lightly attended. Today, these sessions are much more popular. Given the trends we’re seeing, I think SQL Server professionals have a 5 year window to be comfortable helping in both worlds. In general I’m not worried about SQL Server professionals who are resistant to this shift. The market will speak for itself, and DBAs and Developers will then move with the market. Another major factor is the push for skills in data science and artificial intelligence. This too will influence what it means to be a SQL Server professional over the next few years. Continue reading “Interview – Joe Sack”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical), and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Tim Ford (b | t):

Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?

Tim: My bet is definitely on the Cloud. The Cloud-First methodology has been in place for a couple of cycles of releases for Microsoft SQL Server now and I don’t see that changing. It’s been beneficial to both Microsoft in terms of revenue and leadership in the Cloud and it’s boded well for SQL Server Professionals because we’re seeing more stable releases of the “box product” because of the vetting in Azure before releasing to non-cloud production. That means it’s ultimately benefiting anyone who works secondarily with SQL Server and anyone using the product. Continue reading “Interview – Tim Ford”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Andy Mallon (b | t): 

Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?

Andy: The cloud is here to stay. Over the next five years, it is absolutely going to be used by more people in more ways. Not everyone will have their databases running in the cloud, but aspects of our infrastructure will continue to move into the cloud. Part of our job as data professionals is to help determine what technologies and features we use, what the infrastructure looks like, etc. Continue reading “Interview – Andy Mallon”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Parikshit Savjani (b | t): 

Mohammad: Do you think people who dismiss the cloud as a “fad” or just don’t take it serious enough to learn about it (i.e. Azure, AWS, etc), will be in a tough spot to find a job 5 years from now?

Parikshit: Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Every company today, needs software infrastructure to have a website, an app or a digital presence to be discovered since most consumers today look for products and services on the internet, marketplace or e-commerce site. To get feedback, reviews, telemetry, social media  pulse, gain insights and to predict, again,  you need software and infrastructure to ingest, process, transform analyze, predict and report this high volume, variety and velocity of data. LOB applications like CRM, Finance, HR, document repositories are all software services but doesn’t need be proprietary. While every company needs these software services to compete with others in the digital world, it doesn’t make any sense for them to build or maintain these services and datacenters themselves ground up since it is a very high cost to them with minimal value. Continue reading “Interview – Parikshit Savjani”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Anthony Nocentino (b | t): 

Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?

Anthony: Absolutely more cloud focused. The DBA is a role that is in charge of data. Where that data sits, well that’s an implementation detail. Want to stay employed and in demand? Follow the data. To most businesses, the business is the data. An interesting corollary to this is in the server based computing space. We started with main frames and time sharing systems, then we decentralized into PCs and servers…now we’re centralizing again. But this time it’s a little different with The Cloud, I’m intrigued by SaaS and the fact that it’s a service based model. This enables us to focus on higher level constructs as we build systems. Continue reading “Interview – Anthony Nocentino”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Monica Rathbun (b | t): 

Mohammad: Do you think people who dismiss the cloud as a “fad” or just don’t take it serious enough to learn about it (i.e. Azure, AWS, etc), will be in a tough spot to find a job 5 years from now?

Monica: Absolutely, if you are not taking the cloud seriously and learning all you can you are missing the mark. This is something that is not going away and demand for cloud knowledge is only going to grow. I think companies are really embracing and taking advantage of the DR capabilities the could brings, as well as not having to purchase and maintain hardware. If you are looking to learn about the cloud, make sure you not only understand the mechanics but also fully understand the pricing models. Don’t over allocate your environments to prevent a sticker shock scenarios. Continue reading “Interview – Monica Rathbun”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Stacia Varga (b | t): 

Mohammad: Do you think people who dismiss the cloud as a “fad” or just don’t take it serious enough to learn about it (i.e. Azure, AWS, etc), will be in a tough spot to find a job 5 years from now?

Stacia: I think projecting out the evolution of SQL Server even a couple of years from now, let alone 5 years, is difficult to do, given the more rapid pace of release cycles of the product along with changes in computing architectures both on-prem and in the cloud. I’m not sure I would say that the technology would be “more” cloud-focused, either. Instead, I think it’s safe to say that the ability to move between on-prem and the cloud will be more seamless because the trade-offs will not be due to feature differences between the platforms. In my opinion, marketplace demand will ultimately determine whether the cloud version should ever surpass the on-prem version of SQL Server in terms of features and functions. Continue reading “Interview – Stacia Varga”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Steve Jones (b | t): 

Mohammad: Do you think people who dismiss the cloud as a “fad” or just don’t take it serious enough to learn about it (i.e. Azure, AWS, etc), will be in a tough spot to find a job 5 years from now?

Steve: SQL Server is advancing so rapidly, that I struggle to think where we might be five years from now. I certainly expect that we’ll have 4 more versions by 2022 and be on v18. With the pressure to add features to sell new versions, I expect Microsoft to both push the envelope of SQL Server with new concepts, but also add many more under-developed, unfinished, and perhaps abandoned features. Continue reading “Interview – Steve Jones”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Pedro Lopes (b | t): 

Mohammad: Do you think people who dismiss the cloud as a “fad” or just don’t take it serious enough to learn about it (i.e. Azure, AWS, etc), will be in a tough spot to find a job 5 years from now?

Pedro: Definitely will – the cloud is here to stay. PaaS and SaaS models add a lot of flexibility to business and operations, and the elasticity to adjust to volatile workloads is unparalleled in cloud as compared to an on-premise data center. The 1st wave is non-critical workloads moving to the cloud, but we are already seeing trends of customers wanting to use Azure for critical workloads, namely now that cloud vendors (namely Azure) are compliant with more security certifications. Azure Managed Instance is also step in this direction, allowing a database layer of an app to just lift and shift to Azure maintaining the concept and manageability of a SQL Server instance. Continue reading “Interview – Pedro Lopes”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Tim Mitchell (b | t):

Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?

Tim: The data world is certainly going to be more cloud-focused, and that doesn’t just apply to SQL Server. The value proposition of using cloud services – time to market, scalability, cost – is clear, and I see more and more of my clients moving at least part of their data workloads to the cloud. The future of data processing and storage is in hybrid solutions (cloud + on prem), and the successful data professional will learn how to fluently speak hybrid. Continue reading “Interview – Tim Mitchell”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Kevin Kline (b | t):

Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?

Kevin: A few distinct but interrelated evolutions are occurring simultaneously. First, Microsoft now cares most about owning the enterprise data center no matter whose technology was originally in there. So you’re going to see a lot more support from Microsoft in the area of open-source technologies that were previously anathema. You’ve already seen SQL Server on Linux, but why stop there? There’s considerable mindshare behind PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc. Microsoft wants to serve its customers on all of those platforms. Second, cloud is indisputably a “thing” to be reckoned with. If you’re a SQL Server DBA and you’re not catching up on cloud technologies, then you’re definitely falling behind. And don’t forget, in the cloud, poorly performing SQL code and applications cost the company money. So you’d be well served to start learning as much as you can about tuning SQL Servers. Third, the data science disciplines are a “thing” as well. Microsoft is building out these offerings as an adjuct to SQL Server with each new release and sometimes without a new release. One of the great things about the cloud is that it reduces the need for old fashioned skills of DBAs of the 1990’s. If you switch your energies from maintaining those skills into learning a bit more about ML and data science algorithms, you’ll be much more valuable to the business where you’re employed. Finally, the pace of innovation will continue to accelerate. Microsoft has truly mastered a new paradigm of software development. That means new features and capabilities will continue to roll out with regularity. As a person who’s tried hard to keep up the pace, I find it a struggle. For me, this has two implications: A) You’d best specialize so that you don’t go crazy with all of the new things to learn, and B) if you aren’t at least studying a little bit every day, you’re probably complacently settling for obsolescence. Continue reading “Interview – Kevin Kline”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Argenis Fernandez (b | t):

Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?

Argenis: I see SQL Server continuing to gain ground and becoming even more prevalent than it is today. SQL Server on Linux will be HUGE. It already is with more than 1M Docker repo pulls. Continue reading “Interview – Argenis Fernandez”

I decided to start a series of blogs where I interview key people in the SQL Server community. Instead of me asking technical questions, I plan on asking about their outlook on the future, books they read (non-fiction and/or technical),  and their overall thoughts on where technology (mainly SQL Server) is headed. You can find more interviews here.

Next up: Denny Cherry (b | t):

Mohammad: Where do you see SQL Server technology evolving to 5 years from now? More cloud focused?

Denny: For a lot of people things are definitely going to be more cloud focused. Some companies will stay on-premises for a variety of reasons, but for a lot of people moving to the cloud is going to become a reality. The cloud isn’t that scary. It’s a little different, but that’s about it. Looking at Azure SQL DB, it’s basically just SQL Server. It does most of what normal SQL Server does, it runs queries, etc. There’s just less patching and day to day management that needs to be done because Microsoft is taking care of that for you. Continue reading “Interview – Denny Cherry”