You are partly right and partly wrong.

People did tend to stretch the technet subscription. Certainly on for my part it ended up being rigged all the way at home, in VMs with a scratch infrastructure used for work and for fun. Microsoft and pretty much everyone else has twigged that whats happened is a slippage where I think I am not alone. Companies do not give me a test farm. As a tech, I think MS fund this out. My company found this out. I was either going to end up worse at what I do - Or do this.

But, and here is the elephant in the room *But*, I started more than 20 years ago. I started before all the DRM and ever deeper licensing and chasing down every dollar. I started before MS thought is was smart to have 9 versions. I have seen what the loss leader of allowing home use for free actually translated into computers on the office floor as people triggered the wave that meant windows at home - windows at work.

So, that was the tide coming in. I guess the tide always has to shift. So, the home user got targetted as 'pirate' - so between being made the enemy and crapping over them with worse versions and less features, less features, and less features, and them finding the competition (Hi iOS, Android, *nix, OSX) Microsoft have been on the path of eradicating the crack investment first pack free loss leader. You can add in shipping Win8hate - which only tiny minorites even accept, and demand every corner of the ecosystem use (er no..) and then just to cap it off - why not withdraw Technet. Having blown away the loss leader that brought in the kids, Joe Sixpack and the wife, now its time to chew on some tech and admin bones. You can only chew on your roots up to a point, then the plant dies.

Slashdot should actually be happy. MS used to be a company that seemed to wholly understand how to build marketshare, to build the monopoly. iOS and OSX upgrades cost what? £20 or less? Android is free(ish). *Unix has lots of choices. The dev stacks for these exist and are largely in place.

When the OS has rotted, there becomes a growing crisis where the reason for the windows ecosystem rots as well. If you don't run Windows, you don't need sharepoint. You won't need Exchange. You'll be able to change DBs.

Azure? What would anyone need Azure for?

I'm watching the world slowly walk away, and the Board is like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Oh, I know. They have other cities they are building. But Rome is Rome. And when Rome fell, that was the end.

US companies do business in India? Wait.. To get in there you have to fight to pass innumerable hurdles thrown in your way.
How about China?

If the world was a level playing field, I'd probably be ok with the H1 Visa scam bullshit. But I'm not (and I'm a Brit in the UK). Globalisation is fine, I have no problem with it in its bassic capitalist basis. But it has to cut both ways. If China and India get to grow their middle class by working on US workload, then US companies should have the same access to do the same in China and India.

I watch real time each week. Its somewhat weird seeing the slagging off the republicans get there. The dems in the US seem very very friendly to immigration, and to globalisation, and seem to take a lot of funding from the Apple and 'Media' funding. In the meantime on an observational level, seems to me the bone marrow of America - the middle class person is under seige. I can't fundamentally understand off shoring, from a business perspective. Even in raw capitalists terms - eroding the middle class is eroding away your own customer base long term.

Globalisation in the west now seems to be 'worry about the H1 visa holders', and immigrants, and 3rd world - more than your own people. Screw them. Very strange way to proceed.

Its ok to have a concern about minorities and immigrants, but its got strangely out of kilter.

However, it may be possible to cut costs by 50% if you have some expensive bad practises.

Let me give you an example. We replaced our old Dell Workstations - these were £2500 each, with newer, better units (Dell T3600s) for around £1100 a unit. There. In a single phase we cut more than 50% and the new units are not in any way a step backwards. IT costs can/do fall over time, so I'd argue initially that taking a good look may not be as hurtful as initially it seems. Virtualisation and cloud are offering for some areas a seismic shift in workload and capacity and I think spending in some areas in terms of investment can harness good returns on the funding/cost side.

*In the above, I am not agreeing with cuts per se, but if they are there, and are viable, then it has sense to take some time with them and examine the cases.

I did some testing with it. Its good, but its clearly work in progress, and a technical marvel. But its also lacking the tools and toolset for deployment, and management. The only cloud winners will in the end be the ones that have great toolsets and management. If something in the end remains a huge mass of spagetti that only finite skilled souls can pull together and run, then it will be eaten alive.

I have not tested JuJu, but that seems to be like the kind of deployable real world end user tooling that this is going to require.

MariaBD is something of a lame name. Its gonna be harder to pitch/sell than the well named 'MySQL'..

You can't just slide from XP to 8.
You'll have to rethink your app layers.
You'll have to retrain staff.

Many won't. Many will simply look around and choose a different way.

Microsoft's shipping of WinH8, and a massive dose of arrogance in the same dose, has done enormous damage. It wasn't required, and they could have taken a better view and estimation on things and simply underlined 7.

And better yet, they decided in utter crass stupidity to bet the farm on an ARM based incomplete porting effort, and dragged the worst parts on the most undesirable places. Now the ARM based RT versions can't be hooked up to AD, and the Windows clients are fubar. There was no need to do this. They could have run RT as a light weight ARM based Win client - and not damaged X86/64.

On the flip side. PC vendors ship business units that are $300 - have a crappy spec, and have to be replaced on a cycle because they are baseline nasty units. This model is so broken its not even funny. People are rightly looking at $99 tablets and doing the same workloads on something 1/3 price. Mr HP here probably thinks he can sell some business notebooks with 2GB ram. At an inflated price, and inbuilt 'obselete'. These people need firing.

Ultrabooks are just reheated junk, with downclocked parts, shitty performance, a lack of storage, and an inability to do anything really PC level interesting. Oh, and 4 times the price of the other garbage. I can understand why some people might like them, but for me, I can't do chunky computing, I can't play games, I can't adaquatly virtualise on them. They are just thin light office machines, and are worth only a tenth of the price. HP and other vendors persist in building PC's that people simply don't really want. *Thats really why the sales slide has started*.

Hopefully someone will wake up and start shipping real PCs again, with 4 mem slots as a basic standard in lappies, and 8 on the more expensive homeboards.

A medium sized company asked you, and you asked slashdot. My alarm bells are ringing here. If you don't have decent background in this area, and you're query ends up on slashdot, I suspect that as a whole management of the company is screwed. Otherwise they would not have called you in, but rather someone with the right background. To be honest, this seems wrong from the very beginning.

And I note the thread is suggesting 'management consultant'. No, although an IT focused one would be fine. If you are going to establish if an IT team and its function are busted, its not a spreadsheet numbers game. Its an in the trench and looking at the wider picture. In most cases sadly, the truth is a broken IT depeartment is in fact a reflection of a broken management/board structure.

IT isn't easy. And some businesses assume it costs buttons, and that IT projects are simplistic things that just click click and are done. The reality is they can be hugely complex and require seriously good solid workmanship in development and production.

The creation and implementation of such systems is a lurch towards totalitarianism. It is equally bad news should a state cease to be moderate, and any such system will be turned against people in the society. The problem with the ideal 'you have nothing to fear so long as you are law abiding' is that the people implementing the system, also happen to make the laws. So fundamentally they can arbitrarily decide to make you a law breaker.

Let me put this another way. If you investigate a person, - at some point, you'll collate enough dirt on them to do them harm. Its that simple, and its that evil.

I'm English. Its in my legal DNA that my people are supposed to operate in life as innocent until proven guilty. We can read through history the occasons where habeas corpus gets suspended, and its chilling effects.

Actually, the ignorant people are those who fucking swallow hook line and sinker the ideal peddled that Nazi'ism and Hitler and the movement were not socialist.
People actually have to go and read the whole history of things, not listen to snippets peddled by media and especially leftists.

In his final days Ernst Röhm made a speech seriously underlining the 'socialist' aspect of it within the movement. And if you ever read in detail, it becomes impossible to extract socialism from its involvement. Wether it was nationalisation, class war, the power of state over individual, - the party was born from the German workers party, the list is long.

And you can add in something we see today. A lot of bad blood being brewed about 'capitalists', 'bankers' 'economists' and 'industrialists'. Remember this next time you take the time to note a 'socialist' ranting.

The debate about Nazi and where they sit gets skewed. Hilter found much that he shared and created the Nazi party from the German Workers party. He aligned himself with the socialists, until he was famously able to turn to them and stated in Parliament 'And now I don't need you any more'.

Politics is circular, not so much left or right. If middle ground sits at the tp of the circle, offering a level of moderate landscaping, other hardline doctrines slide down the circle, and meet at the bottom, which is where you'll actually find Nazi'ism and communisim and other foul totalitarian and political ideals on near common ground.

I laugh at leftists who persist in trying to find a big enough gap away from Nazi'ism. Socialism IS linked to nazi'ism both in history and idealogy. Hilter nationalised industry. He made enrolled people into the state, and he grew the fucking shit from the German workers party. He carried out a class war - many aspects of his bullshit came directly from socialism.It is true that parts of his evil craven idealogy were not socialist in nature, but parts of it were.

I agree that at both ends of the spectrum, you'll find a strange similar evil to achieve control in a totalitarian aspect share a commonality. Its why you'll find at rally's the right wing hardliners carry stanley knives and the hard left scum carry claw hammers. Neither side believes in open democracy.

In the 30's in Germany - it fell to gangs of brown shirts, or communists, and as the violence and loss of control escalated, the rule of law and democracy was lost. Democracy is not to be decided by small bands of thuggery precahing their twisted idealism as a new religion.

IT is already being shattered. But don't assume this is a good thing. All thats actually happening is massive damage, loss of control, and data being islanded. Whole departments and even orgs will spin out and data spiral arms will spin out.

The primary old school reasons for IT departments - these still exist. You might well think regulation, and compliance have simply gone away. They haven't, they just got forgotten.

One thing being forgotten, is that IT has always been capable of game changing. Always. But what you find is this is usually killed by lack of funding, and by severe red tape. The idea that end around onto the nearest cloud makes you fast moving - is true. But its also usually arbitrary, and outside of operational agreement in many cases.

People assuming that everyone on BYOD and every device under the sum being an out of control compromised, un policied device as a good thing. It will be, for a short time. Until the damage happens.

As for older techs who don't or cant stay up to speed - whats new? Thats not a new IT problem. Thats ever present. Part of the idea of google docs is that to a greater degree - you don't need IT..(at least thats the theory... )

But, I started out long ago. Here is how it rolled.

Started by accident. Foot in the door was someone I knew needed an AS/400 night operator. This job basically entailed loading tapes at given times, and handling print runs and batch jobs, and escalating where needed to 2nd line. That job ran for a while..
That place decided to downsize and change, but the AS/400 stuff gave me enough to go look for more. I ended up in a place with AS/400 and Novell. They moved across adding Win 3.1 and 3.11 and NT4 with MS mail.
This worked through 95 and 95b (at the same time at home at this stage I was running a mob of stuff, a Cyrix IBM 5x68 and some mixed Amiga gear. The office was moving through 286, 386, and 486 gear.
Carried on as AS/400 and PC support continued to cross over, with growing aspect on PCs and support.

Moved to London, carried on, the AS/400 stuff faded and I ended up full on covering PCs, Networks, Servers.
I've been through the whole MS family and I started on Exchange 5 through to the current 2010 release.

Cutting to the chase.
1. Get Technet. I don't know if current circumstances allow MSDN, but get a technet account. Anyone, and I mean anyone working with MS software, PC stuff in their job aspect should have a Technet account. No discussion. No If's, no But's.
2. One of the short comments above was one of the best. Get an MS virtual academy account, and get a trial of Azure.
3. I'll assume you already use virtualisation. If yes, hit 4. If no. Stop everything else. Now go explore Hyper V. Learn it. Learn how to set it up on domain (easier) - and off domain (who made this shit) - and go find a tool called coreconfig from codeplex.
4. Check 3 carefully. Check it again. Anything you are going to build in MS-SQL or with Exchange going forward will likely sit on Hyper V.
5. The requirements of single handedly working on a large scale MS structure of AD, MS-SQL, and Exchange - have basically gotten pretty huge. So large in fact you'll then need to become expert in System Centre. So, slow down. Start to work this carefully. If you plan to do this, and you really mean it, start with some core parts, like Hyper V, and build an exam path and qualify what you can as you go.
6. 5 is an enormous workload today in 2013. If anyone claims otherwise, I think they are talking shit. You are likely to end up majoring in parts, and being laymen in others. My suggestion is that if you choose to do Exchange, and you like it, then built it, test it, exam on it, and make the cert grade. If likewise you work on MS-SQL - and you like it, commit to a focus.
7. The world is full of laymen. Then numbers of people who know enough to be laymen is legion. There are way too few people who really know their shit. In the near future, the laymen are the ones who are heading out of this, don't be one of them.

8. IMHO, although I have said stuff in the above, I believe the above is an environment Microsoft are actively looking to kill, damage, reduce, and replace. As such, be exceptionally aware that you may take the above path and be heading for oblivion. Microsoft are buying more servers than anyone else at this time, and have done this for an extended period of time. Their sole intention to a greater degree is to make cloud their business, and make everyone else out there run their business on the MS cloud. And by MS cloud, I mean a non user serviceable cloud run by Jeffrey Snover level powershelling autobots, because the size and scale by intention is to make what I do now, and what I think you seek to do in near future - too expensive, too slow, and legacy. AD, PC management, Mail, and SQL won't be staying on our Local Lan's, and our users are already mobile. Areas like backup and system management will get automated out, or reduced. So, go look at point 2 carefully. The trial azure account, and learning azure to a level you were considering for Exchange and MS-SQL may be your first step along with Hyper V - and then you may take modifed roads on handling Exchange and MS-SQL azure versions.

9. Learn powershell. I hate it, I think it should be an API people build on, and not the default, but future MS tech's need to be at least reasonably honed on powershell.

10. Put part of your time to one side. Learn Linux, and other technologies, including areas that are within what you call systems. More and more you will face hybrid tech and linux will be part of that.

11. If you run a purist Windows shop, examine DPM. Its an kept quiet, jewel in the crown backup system that MS don't say much about, probably so they don't put noses out of joint with backup players. But test that. Its a seriously good backup option for pure windows operations.

12. Find some people who are peers, on line or similar. Find excellent hang outs, with quality contributors where you can put questions to them and get involved. You will not learn faster than from peers who have seen your problem, and can provide direct solutions. Anyone claiming 'go do this alone' is simply ignoring the volume and challenge involved. You can only progress by levelling up and finding new levels up on a regular basis, and on your own you will plateau too often.

You will find jobs working on your own and off your own back. But you will get better jobs combining experience, a harsh certification program, and job changes as you elevate.

Microsoft lifespan on a product was 11 years for XP, and 3-5 for much of their other range. They are pushing switching to a yearly cycle. *Expect* this to accelerate because yearly cycles will frey existing folks to extinction, and thats frankly by design. MS plans to look after this stuff in due course and is actively making sure you can't. So start thinking about Azure, Virtualisation, and working administration from that side of things.

Side choice. You have some network exams. You could consider the cloud + IP6 on a divergent flightpath, if you have found IP 4 easy to study to cert levels.

Good luck!

Some of the above is true.

When the Israeli's pulled back in Gaza, and they brutally removed their own people's settlements via an agreement to try to change the above fair comments, the response was and has been to use that repartriated land to fire rockets into civilian Israeli areas..

Its a war, I expect nothing less. But expecting the Israeli's to be angelic is cloud cookoo land.

Here is the problem..

In 36-45, The Israeli's - Jews - insert your chosen rhetorical names - were indeed put against the walls and they were shot. And they got shunted into trains and into ovens and into gas chambers. 7 million of them.

The UN mandated Israel, and within hours Arabic and Palestinian armies, contrary to UN and international law decided to launch a mass invasion, and once again the put the israeli against the wall loomed. The Arab world and the Palestinians were quite happy with this, because they were under the illusion that they were about to wipe israel off the map. It did not go that way.

And multiple attempts later, the map is the same, and so are the politics. Arab and Palestinian now appeal to the laws and international community they were so brazen to ignore when they believed they would win.

The Israeli's decided long ago that no one was going to put them against the walls or in the ovens again. And if that meant telling the world where to go, thats what they would do.

I do not have any like or love of Israel or the jewish people. They have for most of their history been on the recieveing end, and having made a home for themselves they now hold a somewhat extreme view on this world, its make up, and where they sit in it. I have no liking for either side. I frankly blame the arab and palestinians for making a complete bouncing balls up in 48, and since then they have been crying like babies and have spent decades being fed AK47s and reading mein kampf. Anyone who things magic-ing away Israel would somehow make that part of the human armpit a better place is under drug induced stupidity.

As much as I dislike Israel - I dislike fascist islam and its armed fuckheads more.

Post WWII, there was going to be no peace. The Jews were going to take a homeland, and the palestinians and arab world with extreme xenophobia and racism were not going to accept it.

I don't accept that this is a one side is evil equasion - there you have my two penneth.

It's a symptom of the long term, tragic and disasterour immigration theory and policy that has operated in the leftist stateism in the UK.

The UK under this system hates allowing in commonwealth, white, english speakers. They get clobbered by levels of visa limitations and immigration policy blockades. 'Asylumn' seekers and refugees somehow end up in the social care system. Its unheard of that you roll up in a state, go to a place in the capital and end up in a scenario where you get to claim a roof over your head and be fed and clothed. Thats how London has ended up. Its wholy wrapped up in PC bullshit, lies and deciet. Its not just London, its a disease across the country.

The people who come do not get properly checked and vetted. Nor are they forced to make admissions of statehood, allegience, or any other boundary. So this has led to a state where large numbers who live inside hate it, have no affinity with it, detest the way of life, and the rest. The numbers of such people who serve in the civil society, or in the state, police, or military is risible. That this has been allowed to happen, and those responsible for this have blood on their hands today.

You can add in Islam on top. Islam has zero place in western society. None. Nothing. Nada. You cannot have the ridiculous ideal of some western liberals where you want gay people to have equality, and you want the Islamics who are so stupid and none intergrational that they still wish to kill gay people or people who decide to leave the 'religion'.

You'll have seen the peddling by political classes that this is not Islam. Oh yes it is. Its the Islam being peddled on the street, in the mosque, in the university, and across the internet, and by the imams. Its the same Islam being applied in endless notable countries across the globe. Its the same islam that legalises rape in pakistan, that legalises female forced criminal child abuse level sexual mutilation across most of the arab world, and its the same islam that is very simple to absorb by looking around the world you live in.

As we have failed to remove problem imams and terrorists over decades, there is zero shock in this attack, in 7/7 or in the worldwide war of the low IQ stupid islamics. So what. I expect nothing less.

I'm now 'guilty' of islamophobia a false and manmade bullshit excuse created to attempt to stifle anti islamic commentry and blame - and of 'blashpemy' - and am the target of 50+ Islamic states who have at UN level attempted to create laws in none islamic states against me, and any other free thinking or enlightened era people in particular in the west.

Very few of these 50 states make it above the state of worthless shithole dominated by islam, with appalling human rights, womens rights, and so on and so on.

I'm seeing a lot of horse shit about race. I'm seeing a whole pile of horseshit about how two people born in the UK of Nigerian family roots, who converted to Islam are angry about people dying in Iraq and Afganistan. Maybe I should go kill someone in Canada because I'm angry about people dying in new zealand. It would make about as much sense. Unless anyone dares to try to make Islam the link. If it is done, rememeber, I hold that link open in all other ways. The Umma isn't a one way street to use to the benefit of islamic stupidity, and then discarded when suitable as a bullshit cloak.