ESG Blogs

As I've written before, I've been a long time attendee to VMworld (if you count EMEA events separately, this is my 15th VMworld). I have to say that the VMworld 2018 Day 1 Keynote potentially had the biggest impact on the industry I have ever seen from the show.

The latest moves in Google's cloud strategy were on full display during Google Next '18. What I saw was a company that is maturing in its focus on cloud for businesses, with a focus on Enterprise support and new efforts in hybrid cloud. Below is a video review of Google Next '18 with myself and other ESG analysts. For a more detailed analysis of the show, please read my research brief on Google Next '18 on the ESG Interactive Research Portal (subscription required).

As I often joke, as most families are getting their kids ready to go back to school, with new school clothes and school supplies, IT professionals prepare for VMworld. I've been going to VMworld almost every year, sometimes twice a year if we include the EMEA show, for over a decade. I think this year in particular, much more so than in years past, is when the future of VMware will be previewed. I think there will be some exciting announcements around the shift away from just virtualization, with NSX, VMware's role with cloud native and containers, and also VMware Cloud on AWS. Watch the video below and, during the show, tweet to me @edwinyuen if you have questions, and if you are at the show, reach out to me to meet face to face. When the keynotes are over, look for a summary blog from me with my analysis of the key announcements.

Google Next '18 is Google's annual show focused on their cloud offerings. Once again, I'll be going to the show and I have a quick video previewing what I think are the key things to watch at Google Next '18. I think there will be some exciting announcements around hybrid cloud, containers, and more enterprise offerings. Watch the video below and, during the show, tweet to me @edwinyuen if you have questions, and if you are at the show, reach out to me to meet face to face. And look for a summary blog from me after the show for my analysis of the key announcements.

As companies adopt new technologies to support digital transformation, the need to update and adapt their monitoring and management tools becomes more and more critical. Companies that have already started to leverage public cloud and more cloud-native applications are finding that they need better monitoring tools, with the capability to monitor new application frameworks and a more application, rather than infrastructure, orientation. ESG conducted research on companies that were already using two or more public cloud providers and when we asked what they have learned about systems management based on their public cloud experiences, 30% responded they need better application and end-user experience monitoring of workloads.

As container and Kubernetes adoption grows, more and more companies are looking for support in adopting and running their environments. Rancher Labs has been leading the way with helping enterprise companies adopt and run container and Kubernetes environments. The Rancher Labs founders have a background similar to mine, in OpenStack, and all of us have learned what worked and didn't work with enterprise adoption.

I recently went to Actifio Data Driven 2018, Actifio's global user conference held at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. At Data Driven, Actifio's customers and partners showcased how and why they use Actifio solutions. I had a number of key takeaways from the conference.

Actifio clearly understands the value and importance of data. This was not just another data protection company adopting the term "Data Management" to frame themselves as more than just backup and recovery. Data Driven 2018 demonstrated that Actifio understands that the value comes from how customers use the data, not just that the data is made available. In session after session and customer meeting after customer meeting, I saw how customers and partners discussed the uses of the data made available by Actifio. I was impressed by the real-world benefits that were highlighted by everyone.

Much of the discussion when it comes to moving workloads from on-premises data centers to cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is about the need to lift and shift VMs. The problem is that much of the discussion is about what happens after the lift and shift, in terms of the operational and cost-side of running VMs in IaaS.

What has been missing is the discussion of how to get those VMs into the cloud in the first place. I can always easily tell who has actually attempted the shift and who hasn't by asking them about the difficulties of converting on-premises VMs to cloud VMs. If the company gets into details about all the different conversion options (data migration, VM conversions, compatible hypervisors) and the issues around each, then I know they have actually made the conversion attempt. 

As I've often written, multi-cloud is probably the hottest term in the IT industry today. You literally cannot buy a product that connects to the cloud that isn't multi-cloud (unless it's from the rare company that aligns with only one cloud service provider). But one of the most interesting things is that there has been very little research on what defines multi-cloud, how extensive it is, why organizations are multi-cloud, and how it will change.

At their annual Red Hat Summit event, Red Hat laid out what they see in the future of cloud. Probably the most notable thing from the event was Red Hat's Jim Whitehurst saying in the keynote that no one company can solve all problems for customers. This is a fact for any one actually trying to solve problems in today's IT environments but it's refreshing for a company to lay this out and reinforce the reason companies need to work together. The future of computing, whether it be with products or leading an open source project, is with the community of users and the partnership of vendors. All vendors need to realize that the future of the IT industry, while still competitive, needs to be fundamentally cooperative to solve real customer problems.