I’ve been posting on twitter a bit about investing in yourself. This is important in any field but especially tech. Technology is constantly changing and if you don’t keep up, you will be left behind and that is NEVER good. You don’t want to go the way of an Exchange administrator. Remember those? When was the last time you met someone actively managing exchange server on-prem? Are they out there? Sure, but it’s a sliver of what it used to be. I remember sitting in meetings with many of these people and they fought tooth and nail on moving to cloud based mail services (O365 typically). Don’t get left in the dust.

When I started over 20 years ago, we didn’t have the amount of resources that we do today. You had to travel to a training site, sit in a class for a few days and then take an exam if there was one. This was expensive, and let’s be honest, inefficient but it was what we had. At that time, investing in yourself was pretty much out of the question. Books, yes actual physical books, were really the only inexpensive “solution” out there.

Fast forward to 2019/2020 and the amount of information out there for learning just about anything is astounding. There are free and paid resources and just so many options on how you want to learn. You can pick the best learning style for you for pretty much any subject out there.

Personally, I invest in a Visual Studio Professional license for the operating systems and other perks, CloudGuru and Pluralsight, a VMware VMUG Advantage subscription and those are just some of the paid ones, there are also a bunch of free resources out there that I use as well. I’m not saying spend a bunch of money because you don’t have too. I choose too because I really like the ease of getting software and some particular training from those sites. In my opinion, it’s a combination of paid and free that works the best but that is for you to decide.

Why am I bringing this up now? It’s because I believe a fundamental shift is coming in the next few years in regards to End User Computing. Yes, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, much of EUC will be moving to the cloud. Everything? Nope but a lot of it will. This isn’t just about desktops either. It’s also the infrastructure. Look at what Citrix, VMWare and Microsoft are currently doing especially Microsoft with WVD and Windows 10 EVD. Microsoft, after many years of not supporting desktops in the cloud, have done a 180 degree turn and are really pushing for this to happen. This opens up the market in a big way.

I’ve worked with terminal services, server-based computing, virtual desktops for pretty much my entire career and I’ve never seen Microsoft put so much of their weight behind this feature of Windows. I worked the Program Managers while testing WVD and they took feedback, acted on the feedback and there to answer questions, troubleshoot issues and simply have good conversations. It’s a different Microsoft in regards to what they are doing here.

What’s the big deal then? How does this change EUC? Well, for one, if the control plane is in the cloud, then there is much less need for that type of expertise. If desktops are in the cloud, then you need to know more about the cloud you are working in. Working in the cloud is definitely not the same as doing things on-prem. I would HIGHLY recommend you start getting your hands dirty now rather than later.

Don’t be a dinosaur. Tech moves way to fast to sit on your laurels. Shoot, if this old dog can learn new things, I guarantee you can as well.