[antod]

I work in a small heterogeneous Linux/Windows SaaS environment where most coding is done in Java or Python. We don't use an MS toolchain because historically MS tools want you to use other MS tools almost exclusively.

But in terms of DevOps things MS as a whole could do that would make our life easier:

* Contribute to Vagrant, Packer, Saltstack and Ansible etc to help make Windows clients better first class citizens with those tools.

* Keep shrinking the disk and deployment (both time and space) footprints of Windows Server and SQL Server. And making sure they stay close to that original size after extensive patching without ballooning out.

* Somehow make licensing and activation etc less painful.

* Native SSH and rsync servers and clients shipped with Windows Servers for better interoperability. No need for a posix command shell, we'd be happy with executing Powershell over SSH - eg if remote Powershell had an SSH transport option as well as WinRM. And being able to forward ports over SSH too.

* Make high availability, robustness and security features common across SQL Server editions. We don't care about business intelligence, reporting etc etc but do want things like mirroring and compressed backups etc without paying through the nose for it.