ESG Videos

Announcer: This is an ESG Video Capsule, IT insights in 140 seconds or less.

Edwin: Hi. I'm Edwin Yuen, ESG Senior Analyst for Cloud Services and Orchestration. When the summer comes to an end and children get ready for school, IT people also know it's time to get ready for VMworld. Traditionally, one of the biggest events on the IT calendar, VMworld is especially exciting this year as VMware starts to make their transition away from being just a hypervisor company and going beyond it. Here are three key things I'm looking forward to at VMworld 2018.

The first key area is VMware's shift to go beyond hypervisors with NSX. We started to see this shift last year at VMworld, where NSX really took the lead in terms of driving multi-cloud and cross-cloud capabilities. This shift to NSX has been a long time coming, since they acquired Nicira. But can VMware continue to drive not only momentum but the cross-platform support needed to drive adoption of NSX? Also, will there be any new partnerships or greater integration with other Dell Technologies offerings? We're definitely looking to see if those are happening.

The second key item is around cloud native and containers. VMware has had a number of starts and stops with their cloud native offers from Photon to VMware Integrated Containers to Pivotal Kubernetes Service. Where does containers and Kubernetes play for VMware customers? Is it on premises, on the cloud, in a hybrid role? I think everyone needs a clearer picture of the path, including what role does PKS play versus the new VMware Kubernetes engine? And if ease of deployment is the role these services play, how do they compete against the services offered by hyperscale providers?

The third key point is whether hypervisors are dead or not. I think they're still the king of on-premises. ESX's role in the future seems to be supporting hybrid cloud. VMware Cloud on AWS is the key product in that hybrid motion. But will there be any additional product-side announcements or greater insights into customer momentum? Will AWS be the primary ESX Cloud vehicle? Or will Google and Microsoft potentially become platforms? I'll be tweeting out in real time my impressions of VMworld during the show, during the keynote, and I'll return afterwards with a summary and some key takeaways.