At the first technical session of the TechEd conference in Atlanta, Microsoft’s technical manager of their System Center and Virtualization and Forefront team, Kenon Owens, spoke about using the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) to create a private cloud, though didn’t mention the massively long title he gets to carry around.

Owens said that he’s been talking to IT pros and those who know the business best, and they’ve told him that there’s a shift going on in business – one that’s leading to IT getting sidelined for efficiency’s sake. According to his sources, IT departments are finding their own companies are going around them in an effort to find better resources, and that pros feel that management and other employees “think we’re getting in the way.” To some extent, this is not surprising; the mandate of the cloud has long been that it provides simple and easy access at a non-physical level, and IT has always been focused on managing local resources, something that is quickly fading away.

In response to this problem, Owens says that the key is for IT to start running private cloud infrastructures using Microsoft’s VMM, which will let them treat any Hyper-V server as appliances that they can manage. The idea is that the new System Center will be able to handle multiple server types from Microsoft, Citrix and VMware, providing IT departments with a way to stay viable in the changing cloud world. Though companies have yet to fully realize the benefit of both private and public cloud computing, concepts like the new System Center are gearing up to make it easier for both IT and business to make best use of the cloud.