If you read my previous post ( part 1 ), I kind of concluded that you had 2 choices. Of course the answer is somewhere less binary and perhaps in between the two options. This post is another discussion about where we are headed in an non-technical way, I hope. "Reflecting on my future" - A scenario " So you are sitting there enjoying your coffee and analyzing what has happened in your datacenter the last couple of years. You have "virtualized" the network and the load balancers (you do use Citrix Netscalers right). Your Netscalers are happily living their life as virtual appliances on your hypervisor along with the rest of the windows/linux servers. Your clients are being served by System Center Configuration Manager. The users can deploy their new laptops from SCCM and use the Software Catalog to install the software packages they need. Your servers and SNMP network devices are monitored by System Center Operations Manager and you have implemented Syst...