At SQL Saturday #169 in Denver I sat in on a panel that talked about cloud computing. There was a consultant, a customer, and a Microsoft representative that give different perspectives on what their experiences were with Windows Azure. It was an interesting talk and the more I learn about the cloud, the more potential situations where I think it applies. It's not for everyone, but there are a lot of places where it can work, and I would encourage you to learn more about cloud services and cloud computing.

One really interesting question was asked. Do you know the skills needed for modern Microsoft data centers? Truck driver. A truck driver can drop off a shipping container with servers pre-configured inside and just plug it in to power and network, often with no cooling needed. A fenced in parking lot, open to the atmosphere, makes a nice, inexpensive, low maintenance data center.

Read the rest of "The Future of DBAs" at SQLServerCentral.