Happy New Year everyone!  Here’s to a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2015.  Thank you for reading my blog, it’s been a fun ride.

As we know, the world of SPLA is ever-changing.  Here’s a list of 5 SPLA predictions for 2015.  I will book this post, and see where we are at in 2016.

1.  IaaS providers will continue to flourish as customer’s and hoster’s have a better understanding of license mobility and the ways it can lower licensing costs.  Companies will leverage the Azure and Amazon momentum to offer their own unique offerings.

2. Compliance will be front and center.  Surprise!  Companies that are hosting but don’t know they are hosting will be the most impacted.

3. “Cloud Sprawl” will be the new term used by IT consultants and managed service providers.  As the cloud industry expands, there will be a push to consolidate vendors.

4. There will be new terms for hosting VDI. I don’t know what that means from a licensing perspective, but I can see Microsoft making a change in the ways VDI can be deployed for third-party hosters.  Perhaps good news in the works?  Again, just guessing here.

5. Like VDI, I can see a change in the way Office can be deployed.  In my opinion, too many ISV’s use Office as part of their application, it would make sense to make this more economical to host it.

What do you think will happen in 2015?  Will hosting expand, retract or stay the same?  Will VDI and Office use rights change?  Time will tell.

Thanks for reading,

SPLA Man