ESG Blogs

VMware held its flagship customer event, VMworld 2019, in San Francisco last week.

It was a big week for VMware, especially since it was coming on the heels of announcing two significant acquisitions of Pivotal and Carbon Black. Much of the news this year centered on the desire to embrace containers and manage hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Along those lines, the big announcements included:

VMworld was big – but that’s not really news. It has been big for a while – both from an event perspective, but also from a market impact perspective; after all, VMware is the chosen basis for many applications and users. But this year, the “choir” grew; this was partly the obvious growth of those paying attention, including the newly intended-to-be-acquired Pivotal and Carbon Black…but it was also because of a more cohesive and inclusive message. To use terms that VMware would approve of, the company used its virtually eponymous mega-gathering to ‘make its mark’ in the ‘age of any’ by running even-more-keenly towards a multi-cloud world. Heterogeneity was everywhere…as long as that heterogeneity runs on VMware, of course! Conversations about - and proposals for - hybrid-, multi- and even edge- cloud, were both well-constructed and explained…but also at times served to prudently obfuscate the fact that VMware sees itself as the [benevolent?] spider at the center of this expanding IT web.   

The theme of this year’s VMworld is “Make you Mark.” The kickoff keynote delivered a familiar narrative placing the IT leader in the place of a hero, a cross between “Morpheus and Hermione,” gifted with powers to change the world.

When you think about VMware and cybersecurity, two products have always stood out. NSX has evolved into a common micro-segmentation tool for east/west traffic within ESXi, while AppDefense monitors applications, determines “normal” behavior, and detects anomalies.

Yes, VMworld is a vendor event.

But it is also as near to a general IT event as there is.

The 2018 version in Las Vegas showed this “parallel dichotomy” in full force. A focus on the company’s own progress, innovation, and execution was pretty much matched by a focus on its partnerships and its integral position in the overall IT ecosystem. It’s hard to cover everything; but an extensive ESG contingent did its best to distill down some of the key new announcements and take-aways. It means that our On Location video is a little longer than usual at 7 minutes, but it’s packed with insights.

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.

With VMworld approaching next week, I thought I would share what I’m expecting to hear and what I’m looking forward to on the HCI front in Vegas.

I’m excited about the shift and spotlight HCI has garnered over the last year. It’s gained traction, it’s gotten more competitive, and it’s being recognized as much more than an x86 server with compute and storage. It’s about incorporating networking, ensuring workload mobility, properly managing distributed clusters, data lifecycle management, and embracing hybrid cloud. And while all of these aspects will be key areas of focus at the show as whole, let’s focus on HCI.

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.

As I said in my pre-VMworld blog - I have a love/hate relationship with the conference. It didn't disappoint - it was a wild and crazy few days and a veritable who's who of the tech industry. There were plenty of announcements from VMware (most notably its efforts with AWS and Google, as well as vSAN momentum), partners like Pivot3 (new partner programs and NVMe-based solutions), Dell EMC (new VxRack and Rail solutions), Lenovo (ThinkAgile VX Series and cloud reference architecture) - I think I could go on with this list for a very long time!

VMworld is still “the place to be” for discussing data center modernization—and that means that there were several data protection vendors in attendance, each with something to say.