Demystifying the World of Virtualisation & Technology
After a lot of planning and talking, the week had finally arrived for some key updates from VMware. Significant or not I’m sure these announcements will be full of controversy, mystery and hot anticipation for VMware users…so what’s new ? » Read more
This probably sums it up. Once again I’m looking forward to being part of the Tech Field Day Series and heading to VMworld for a full day of blogger briefings in the guise of Tech Field Day Extra. » Read more
VMworld 2015 US is the one I’ve been waiting for during my lengthy I.T career and am lucky enough to be visiting San Francisco this year to enjoy the largest VMware event of the calendar year. So what will I be doing over the course of almost a week… » Read more
Its been a long time coming but I hadn’t got time to publishing my final couple of days but wanted to get this out.
Day 3 was all about my last few sessions and also talking to some more vendors. I attended a brilliant presentation featuring real customer cases all around D.R. and their business continuity processes and what they had learned in their various journeys. It was interesting that a representative from VMware was also on stage and they seem to always be learning from product sets and improving business processes internally which is refreshing to hear. I also talked to IBM at their stand and to Fortinet about their security solutions. Infinio was also on my list as I know they have a compelling acceleration product likened to the Pernixdata product. It was also an opportunity for me to view a demo of the free Veeam edition that can back up physical machines. I met up with Niels Engelen (who I already knew from twitter) who walked me through the product and it looks so intuitive and very similar to the standard Veeam interface. Kudos to Veeam for finally exploring the need to backup the last few physical servers and also workstations that people may be considering.
I attended the customary VMworld party later on that evening and got a chance to see Simply Minds on stage. Although I’m not a big fan of theirs its still live music and enjoyed the night conversing with a the vGeeks I’d met over the last few days. I must say the DJ was very good and they could have kept him longer than 10pm but the night had come to an end and it was time for me to go back to the hotel and pack.
Day 4 was the final day and luckily I had packed the night before so was all set to check out on time and leave the luggage at the conference center. All went smoothly as I had done this before and for me this was just a final chance to attend the Solutions Exchange and also to try and meet one of two bloggers who I had met earlier in the week. It was uncanny that I saw so many people from the exhibition hall on the plane and many vendors. Wonder what the D.R. plan would be for losing that many key staff in one hit ???
I can say I thoroughly enjoyed the event and learned so much. It was great to meet new faces and old ones and I’m hoping to stay in closer contact with the bloggers I conversed with. Feet are a little sore from all the walking but this is part and parcel of walking the conference floors and should heal up soon.
A slight delay in this blog post but couldn’t be avoided.
Day 2 was all about VMware showing its journey and evolution in the SDDC (Software defined DataCenter) and Pat Gelsinger was covered off all the major software updates as well as the improvement of the partner ecosystem which now includes HP and HDS in the EVO Rail (Another converged infrastructure block) stack. This is designed more for the SMB space and I’m looking forward to hearing more about its bigger brother, EVO Rack, when it’s released. Sanjay Poonen took us through the EUC landscape and how the the new Horizon Flex solution will improve container desktops and also the local desktop offerings on both Mac and PC devices. Another great stage presence from Sanjay and he clearly showed his passion for the area he has been put in charge of.
I made it a point to attend a few session yesterday on vRealize Ops Manager and then wanted to talk to some vendors at the Solutions Exchange.
As always there are plenty of key players demonstrating their SDDC vision and how convergence is being shown. I talked to both IBM and Nutanix on their new platforms to tackle this. I met my good friend Yossi Siles from the storage team in Tel Aviv who walked me through IBMs vision for vVols and it’s good to know they are catching up with the competition (finally !!). I also had a good chance to talk to a Nutanix UK manager who took me through their webscale vision and their ever increasing market share in the hyper converged infrastructure area.
I had some time booked with Nimble storage and it was good to have a deep conversation with Nick Dyer and Charlie Whitfield who are great spokesmen for the company.They explained their growth had increased over a year and have shipped over 700 units which is up from around 100 last year. The Storage market is big enough for everyone to take a segment of revenue and Nimble seem to be doing very well with a wider range of storage units to meet both performance and capacity demands. Very impressive !!
I also took part in the ‘Destination Giveback’ initiative. This is designed for VMworld attendees to donate to charity through the VMware foundation. Simply put, fly a paper airplane as far as you can and this equates to Euros that you can decide to allocate funds to a category such as Children, Women, Health etc. I was lucky enough to hit the €1000 mark and go straight on the leaderboard. Skills in aeronautical design I guess ??
Finally, I managed to attend the annual Veeam party that was very mellow until Ratmir Timashev (Veeam CEO) grabbed the mic and thanked his partners and customer base. It was a lot more vibrant after this but I had left early in order to get some rest before Day 3 and rest my aching feet.
Stay tuned for more from a Day 3….
What a great start today especially as it was a dry sunny day in Barcelona. After having an enjoyable evening at the vRockstar party last night and meeting some new faces, it was down to some serious business.
This year I was lucky enough to have a TAM pass from our account manager and it was well worth it. Small crowds were entranced with speeches from Carl Eschenbach (VMware president) and Joe Baguely (EMEA CTO) and as ever Joe was great at painting a picture of the future of I.T with the focus on doing away with infrastructure thoughts and moving to more app centric futures. Since I am under NDA I cannot say too much but everyone will be picking up a lot of it at the keynotes throughout the week.
I then attended a great presentation from Kit Colbert, who works out of the Office of the CTO for EUC, and he led us though the vision for device management and how recent acquisitions have helped the VMware portfolio. I also had the pleasure of conversing with Kit over lunch which was a nice touch to the TAM day experience.
Finally, I was very privileged to hear from Ben Fathi (CTO based in Palo Alto) who talked about the strategic direction for VMware. Another great presenter who is passionate about driving change for the end users and within the hallowed walls at VMware. We also saw an interesting slide of when GSX 2.0 was released and how the vision for that grew into the more mature product we see today in the SDDC.
The day was well worth it and even though Pat Gelsinger was delayed and could not present it was a good day and well worth hearing about the vision for this big software defined company. Watch this blog and feel free to share amongst your peers as there will be more to come over the next few days.
Another fine keynote presentation from Carl Eschenbach, Kit Colbert and Joe Baguely went into more of a deep dive of the the Pat Gelsinger keynote from the previous day about the SDN. » Read more
Another busy day at the Vmworld conference and we were to party to an interesting keynote with some announcements in line with what we expect from Barcelona. » Read more
Monday saw the first day of the Vmworld conference featuring Hands on Labs, TAM day and Partner Day and a chance for people to come and register ahead of the kick off on Tuesday.
The HOLs were particularly well designed and much improved on last years version and I can honestly say that I found them to be very engaging. Having been through the Mirage, vCHS and the vSAN labs I found that the screens were fluid and it was good to play with products to gain some familiarity with areas I hadn’t seen before.
As I’m neither a partner or qualify for TAM I had to miss out on the events and speeches that I’ve heard were very well accepted by the crowds.
It was good to meet up with VMware staff and fellow bloggers alike in the bloggers lounge and talking with some recognisable names in the vCommunity.
So onto the next day and some exciting keynotes with a few surprises I hope. Looking forward to walking a lot (not) and learning/networking some more for the next few days. More thoughts and experiences to follow so stay tuned.
We are not far off from the event of the year that is Vmworld 2013 Europe. It is back again at the Fira Barcelona Gran Via. Here’s a rundown on my thoughts for the event and some links that may be of use. » Read more