vExpert 2020 unlocked

A certain announcement was made recently and I’m super chuffed to be included in the next batch of vExpert accolades for 2020. I was not certain if I’d make the cut this year partly to blogging a lot less than previous years. Thankfully my contributions in the community with the OpenTechCast podcast as well as activities at VMworld and other events may have helped.

To be recognised for a seventh year means a great deal to me and shows how far the vCommunity has come. I have huge admiration for those that are in their 12th year and also for the first timers for showing determination in being involved and also going through the application process.

The programme continues to evolve and excel and thanks to a great community management team at VMware, it means people like me can continue to evangelise and help others in the community to understand and enable the greater VMware portfolio and its constituent parts.

My focus for 2020 will be ensuring I continue to share knowledge and also to increase my blogging where possible. Being part of this community has many advantages and the most prized possession is having access to a vast group of individuals who are experts in multiple domains. This is something I leverage constantly and something that makes this a unique experience.

For those who didn’t make the cut, please seek out your vExpert PROs who can help with your application criteria and never give up. One day you’ll also wake up to the surprise email….

VMworld – Day 3 Wrap Up

Sanjay Poonen opened up as our host for the day.

The engines that are the powerhouse of the corporation are essentially focused around innovation and customer satisfaction. Bringing them together achieves high growth and a powerful story.

Skyline was a project mentioned that means customers have a proactive approach to support of the their essential infrastructure.

The economic impact is huge over the last 10 years. The revenue alone shows the impressive growth trajectory that VMware has enjoyed.

Sanjay swiftly moved on to show the economic savings from software defined storage and then software defined networking.

The ultimate killer slide was the ultimate economic impact of a hybrid cloud model.

Next up were some customer stories with Vodafone and Rentokil amongst them. Vodafone talked more about NFV (Network Function Virtualisation) and the pace of development in 5G and the research that is ongoing. The key point that Vodafone mentioned is that they are on a path to virtualising their network and telco foundation and looking at cloud.

Sanjay then focused in on devices and the proliferation of mobile.

The eye chart that summed it up was the economic value of Workspace One.

The digital workspace is the key to realising this value.

And so Sanjay brought in customers that have been focused on EUC solutions. The NHS christie group was up first talking about their Horizon and Airwatch deployments and how critical it is for healthcare professionals to be able to access data on any device whilst maintaining a high amount of security.

Airbus was up next to talk through a recent case of swapping out a fleet of blakberrys using the power of Workspace One.

Seeing Martha Lane Fox talk about her journey from Lastminute.com to working closely with the government was a truly inspiring moment. Humble, inspiring and a thought leader would sum up her journey so far.

Thanks for another great keynote.

My moments

I was also honoured and privileged to be interviewed by Aaron Buley who leads the Dell EMC HCI Technology Engineering team. Watch here to learn how community is important to me, Brian Graf and Gina Minks.

Lastly I took part in the vExpert Daily Panel which you can watch here.

 

VMworld 2018 – Day 2 Thoughts

I was lucky enough to have front row seats for today’s opening Keynote.

Thanks to all those at VMware for my blogger pass this year.

I also managed to grab Joe Baguley for a quick chat and a selfie with some fellow bloggers.

Jean-Pierre Brulard kicked off proceedings today and mentioned that we had a record 12000 attendees at the event.  VMware also celebrated the 20 year milestone at VMware. Impressive just to think it feels like yesterday when virtualisation was being played with.

Pat Gelsinger came up next to focus on “bridging the gaps” in the IT silos.

The significance here was that disruption has happened year on year whilst businesses continue to do well by focusing on making profit.

The number that matters the most to the environment was the carbon saving that VMware has made and has now achieved carbon neutrality 2 years ahead of schedule.

Tech superpowers

Cloud, Mobile, AI/ML and Edge/IOT are the key areas of focus that Pat mentioned as the key enablers for business and technology.

The best phrase I heard was AI is the 30 year overnight success. AI is game changing and we are merely scratching the surface.

Edge is accelerating and touching every aspect of society and it was clear from Pat that dramatic changes are happening all around us at a pace that has never been seen before.

“The application is the network” and the VMware vision fits around this message. You saw it last year and the vision is still alive of any app on any device on any cloud.

Security

The next focus area was Security and that there are still flaws in the I.T ecosystem. People deploy tech all the time but security is still an afterthought. The model is shifting to intrinsic security built into every component.

Micro segmentation was talked about to prevent bad actors from horizontally scaling a datacenter. The key driver here is NSX and Pat was keen to convey the message of Security should be at the heart of every technology conversation.

With AppDefense being a part of vSphere Platinum, Pat mentioned that this is like “burgers & fries”. You always leave the restaurant with both and the emphasis here was that the VM and Security should be deployed hand in hand.

Adaptive Micro-Segmentation was introduced by tieing in AppDefense, vSphere & NSX.

Ray O’Farrell was up next with Vijay to show Appdefense in action through vSphere Platinum.

AppDefense

The demo that was showcased in the keynote showed hows Appdefense learns the behaviour of a VM through Machine Learning. This creates an application behaviour map so the policy can lock down the application by the ruleset that is trusted.

Again, Learn-Lock-Adapt, was talked about as the enabler to shrink the attack surface in the datacenter.

Cloud

My favourite subject at the moment especially when it comes to hybrid cloud and multi cloud conversations. Pat was back on stage to give a definition of hybrid cloud – Consistent Infrastructure and Consistent Operations both within a Private & Public cloud. Cue VMware Cloud Foundation as the defacto standard for the base of the fully integrated software defined datacenter solution.

Mercy Ships was showcased as a company that has moved to an integrated HCI approach to delivering I.T to remote ships in the form of VxRail.

Swiftly moving onto Public Cloud, Pat mentioned the long running VMware Cloud Provider programme made up of 4,200 cloud providers and this has tripled in the last year. Pat brought on Arvind Krishna from IBM Cloud who have played a significant part of this journey to hybrid cloud.

IBM and VMware announced the first multi-zone region offering showing the strength of their continued partnership. They also announced a new VM + Container solution to modernise apps in a secure way using IBM Kubernetes as the orchestration engine.

The next focus are was the VMware and AWS relationship showing that the trajectory is ramping up as more regions come on board to ensure that VMware would be represented globally. Of course, of mention earlier this year was the Amazon RDS on premises solution. Pat demonstrated how the views that a developer sees both on premises and off looks very similar was looking at RDS.

Project Dimension was highlighted (announced earlier this year) to show the fully managed SDDC service from VMware that can be hosted on premises and at edge locations. By using VMware Pulse IOT solution at the edge and delivering the network edge via Velocloud, these game changing technologies will become fully mature over the next few months/years.

Cloudhealth, the acquisition made earlier this year, was mentioned for managing, monitoring and operating workloads in the cloud. Currently at 3500 customers and growing and I’m sure we will see more announcements as VMware matures their offerings with Cloudhealth now on board.

Network

Pat then focused on the network and the important acquisition of Nicira. Now over 7500 customers using NSX highlighting the rapid growth of network virtualisation. With Velocloud and embedding this into the NSX and network fabric, Pat wants this to be the essential cloud networking fabric.

5G was an area that Pat said was an opportunity that lies ahead and will drive the tech superpowers mentioned above. Not sure how long it will take to get there but there is significant advantages to this new telco standard.

Applications

Pat moved onto Kubernetes and how containers should be leveraged on VMware solutions. Having an orchestration and management engine for containers is not enough and the infrastructure layer must still be managed.

The acquisition of Heptio was announced in order to accelerate the adoption of Kubernetes across the enterprise.

PKS was the next item of discussion and announced was VMware Cloud PKS where VMware run the PKS environment on AWS. More clouds to come soon but this is a major win.

PKS on VMware was the next demo by Wendy (Cloud Native Marketing) and Ray. The value prop here is that VMware manages the networking and operations.

Devices

Pat came back on stage to mention how devices are still important to consume services and data. Device proliferation is everywhere and Workspace One was the focus area of how to attacks the complexity of device management. Workspace One Intelligence can look into the OS spread and updates especially now that Windows 10 can be leveraged with the apps installed on the OS to check for compatability.

The rest…

Project Concord was talked about as the VMware Blockchain solution and VMware announced it was now released in Beta.

VMworld 2018 – Day 1 Thoughts

After arriving on Sunday it was a smooth logistical process from start to finish and I had a chance to meet up with a lot of friends & customers at the vRockstar event in the evening. This event is always great to meet up with like minded passionate individuals from varying backgrounds so is a good warm up to the event itself.

Monday was all about TAM day and Partner day. I elected to attend the VMUG session focused on Dell EMC and VMware HCI offerings as well as a captivating session by Brian Graf covering VMware Cloud on AWS.

Paul Mackay (EMEA CTO for Modern Data Center team) hosted a session focused on HCI in particular the use cases and outcomes that customers are asking for. He was assisted by Steffen Matthias who covered the technical aspects of Dell EMC HCI solutions and this was well received by the audience. It was a frank, informal discussion and I felt that this is what customers want especially when they can hear from vendors on how to get to the software defined datacenter and eventually hybrid cloud.

The rest of the day was spent networking with my customers and talking to the various VMware staff and old acquaintances at the various booths about the new themes this year.

The next few days are bound to be hectic with a lot of announcements and some interesting sessions so will give you my take on these as we go along with the event.

 

VMworld 2017 EU – Day 2 Recap + Interviews

It seemed like a whirlwind few days at VMworld but Day 2 was an eye opener for many reasons which I’ll go into here.

Keynote

The theme was kept similar to previous years and Day 2 enhanced the Day 1 keynote by delving deeper into the solutions and technologies unveiled the day before. This format provides the audience with the knowledge and know how of concepts they perhaps didn’t key understand on Day 1. In this case VMware showcased a fictitious company called ‘Elastic Sky Pizza’ and how they used Cross cloud, HCX, Network Log Insight and various other products on stage. It’s good to do this as it reinforces the key messages from Day 1 and shows real use cases to the wider public. Chris Wolf, VP & CTO, and Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products (Cloud Business Unit) both played a part in demonstrating the provisioning of workloads, portability, monitoring and the extensive use of the product sets. Personally, I felt there was a lot of content here and the audience did start to feel a bit lost towards the latter part of the presentation so keeping the content light and digestible is a key element here but difficult to achieve in practice.

Dell EMC Elect Podcast

I was asked to appear on the podcast as were a few members of the community and I didn’t hesitate to say Yes. It’s always great to catchup with Mark Browne who runs the programme and it was good to give my feedback and thoughts on the event. You can hear my interview below after the 9 min mark on iTunes or via the the player below.

Itunes

Interviewing the VMware execs

My highlight of this VMworld was being able to interview some special guests for the Opentechcast podcast that I co-host with my good friends (Alex Galbraith, Ather Beg, Kev Johnson & Gareth Edwards). Now I always like to try and do something different at each VMworld I attend and this one really knocked it out of the park. What was a simple idea and something that seemed unachievable was eventually planned and executed just the way I imagined. Arranging these interviews was difficult as I was also on holiday whilst the fine detail was being planned but I was happy that I got in touch with the right people at the right time and all the pieces finally fell in place.

First up was our interview with Pat Gelsinger, CEO VMware, which was a monumental episode and was every bit as exciting as it sounds. Here’s a link to listen to it via the OpenTechCast webpage or iTunes.

OpenTechCast Ep6

iTunes

Second up was Sanjay Poonen, COO VMware, who I’ve always admired from his stage presence and candid nature. I just don’t think I’ll ever play the piano as well. Links below.

OpenTechCast Ep7

iTunes

Thanks for reading my impressions of VMworld 2017.

VMworld 2017 EU – Day 1 Recap

It was a busy and hectic day as usual but Day 1 was very insightful. Over 11,000 attendees so it was a busy conference already.

Being on the other side of the tech circle and now in the vendor world meant I wanted to learn a bit more about the ecosystem and less on the features and functions of the new releases. Of particular interest was how VMware’s vision ties into the ecosystem and the wider Dell Technologies umbrella.

Pat Gelsinger was keen to draw our attention to VMware’s ambitions to be the glue that bridges the multi-cloud world. It’s evident that the messaging is now encouraging customers and partners to understand that this is not a closed eco system but one where VMware can partner with all the clouds of this world.

HCX not HDX

Pat announced HCX which can bridge the app mobility gap between on and off premises worlds. This is not a GA product yet looks to have a bright future. You can read more below. At the moment IBM and OVH have the prime focus but this will spread to other clouds I’m sure – https://cloud.vmware.com/vmware-hcx

Dell EMC + IBM – say what ?

Close to my heart was the news around Dell EMC and IBM. Personally I never knew this was being worked on but hearing that there is now an integrated cloud solution with vCenter – you can read more on what this entails and how Dell EMC is reselling services to the IBM Cloud by going here – https://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2017/20170912-03.htm

VMware on AWS

As a follow on from last year there was a lot more focus on this managed service from VMware. There were a number of breakout sessions as this is now GA but I didn’t manage to get a space. I did hear that at GA not everything is available to seamlessly migrate workloads using NSX but this is a heavy piece of engineering and is something that will come in time. As yet the focus of this announcement is around offering choice and flexibility and the vibe around the conference was one of enthusiasm especially for existing VMware and AWS customers.

VR that Datacenter…

It was good to see a mix of content and this year Alan Renouf’s pet project got a major boost as he was featured on stage with Pat showing how an HTC Vive could be used to migrate a virtual machine to the cloud and also destroy a virtual machine. It was a really good demo but will we ever see this adopted in the workplace. Hmmmm..not sure on that one but at least the APIs can be used to control vSphere workloads in an alternative way.

Wrap Up

For me Day 1 was a great job by the marketing and events team at VMware. Keynote was executed to the highest standard and there was a real focus on simplicity and choice. Pat also had VxRack and VxRail references in his presentation so the synergy with Dell Technologies is ripe and evident this year. As shown above my mission statement is clear on how I intend to help the ecosystem…

VMworld 2017 is almost here

It’s been rather quiet lately in the world of tech but all of that is about to change next week when the US VMworld event kicks off and our Twitter timelines go crazy for a few days.

So can we really expect a ton of new products and features ? 

Well – it’s a good question and we know that announcements have been few and far between but expect some more VMware on AWS updates. I also think that EUC is a prime revenue generator so we may see more with Workspace One and not forgetting NSX of course.

Traditionally there would be a lot of enhancements to core product lines and over the years this has been well received but now practitioners and managers alike are seeking more innovative and disruptive means to modernise and fuel their digital growth so I think VMware will be focusing in on how they stay relevant especially in the world of IoT and AI which has everyone talking right now.

Although I won’t be in Vegas this year, I will be in Barcelona for the European event so am very much looking forward to the european announcements. I will also be building more bridges and extending my network so if you’ve never met me before and you follow me on Twitter (@amitpanchal76) or follow my ramblings on tech here then please be sure to say hello. I am also recording a few podcasts this year in the VMvillage with the @OpenTechCast group which will be a welcome change and very much looking forward to this.

Final notes – pack light, don’t squeeze in all the sessions you can and above all wear comfortable footwear !!

Look forward to meeting you if our paths cross.

VMworld 2016 – Experience & Opportunity

Well what can I say ? 2 main keywords that really sum it up for me.

It’s been a productive, interesting and tiring event but I wanted to write about my experiences this time especially as I was missed Barcelona last year.

Firstly a big thank you to Corey Romero for the Blogger Pass I was lucky enough to have for this trip. I was particularly pleased that Bloggers and Press were able to sit in the first few rows at the Keynotes so had a good view and was able to write up notes as I watched the epic presentations. My highlights were obviously the AWS and VMware announcement as well as the new releases of vSphere and VSAN. EUC also had a strong presence and clearly VMware and Airwatch are going from strength to strength trying to make the Workspace One solution a great solution for those looking to bring together mobility and a simple SSO experience.

It was my first year presenting at the vBrownbag community area and I enjoyed my experience. It was a strange feeling to record directly in front of a camera but I loved my time on stage educating all on the importance of Career Disruption. Thanks to Alastaire Cooke and the crew for having me on. Maybe I can do the vExpert Daily panel next year ?? You can view my video below.

I was also drawn towards the Hands on Labs and Cloudcredibility areas where I hadn’t spent much time before in previous years and the whole gamification of completing challenges and learning at the same time was clearly a winning formula. It clearly means attendees can learn a lot more whilst also enjoying moving up the leaderboard and claiming gifts.

Of the sessions I attended, I enjoyed Frank Denneman’s overview on what the vSphere on AWS solution promises to deliver in 2017 and Robbie Jerrom’s Photon / Cloud Native presentation giving developers an easier way to move to Docker and Kubernetes whilst continuing to use the rich vSphere platform.

Networking and Community

2 big important areas for my development as an individual and I found I met a lot more people here this year. Being able to converse with people from vendors, partners and customers really helps me to understand the bigger picture for transformation and I.T. disruption. Apart from the vBrownbag achievement I was also glad to talk to various VMUG leaders about the upcoming events and get their take on the industry as a whole. I managed to meet various Twitter friends who I’ve been meaning to bump into for a while now and also past friends from my exploits at Tech Field Day.
One of my highlights this year was that I had a good frank discussion with friends who work at other storage vendors. We all see resentment and FUD when it comes to vendor wars, either through Marketing or through Twitter but I found it refreshing to be able to forget speeds and feeds for a while and talk more about how the industry was going and what customers were seeking when making investments. I talked to good friends at both Hedvig and Nimble on how the shape of enterprise I.T. was changing and what consumers were looking for when it came to storage. We came to the concensus that whilst speeds and feeds where good conversation points, its ultimately the manner in which you can consume, interpret and analyse the data where storage becomes useful to both admins and end users.
The events that I attended, particularly the VMUG evening and the Veeam evening were great places to relax, unwind and reflect on the good and bad points of this years show. The Vmworld party was not bad but not a patch on previous years (maybe because I’d never heard of Empire of the Sun who were the main act.

Recording the next episode of the podcast – OpenTechCast – with several VMware and blogger guests was a bonus too. Keeping the conversations light, informative and fluid meant my cohosts and I gained a lot of value and I hope you’ll agree once you listen to it.

Wrapping Up

So if I could change 1 thing about the show what would it be ?

I think it would be the fact that lunch was not provided on Monday at the conference center for attendees. One other point was that breakfast was not up to par of previous years so it would be good if this was improved next year.

On the whole it was a great conference and one where I certainly walked away with a lot more nuggets of information in my arsenal when talking to customers about their digital transformation.

Roll on VMworld 2017 !!

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