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2015 VMworld Top 10 List: What’s the Buzz?
Lots of information from VMworld 2015 and as usual the show floor was the place to check out the reality behind the PowerPoint slides… VMware has done a better job than most tech vendors at delivering innovation and products that really help customers. Let’s check out the Top 10 things from VMworld first 2 days.
- Cloud Academy and the “Squeaking Apps”
VMware used this surreal headmaster to introduce the curriculum at the Cloud Academy and the One Cloud, Any Application, Any Device mantra. But the guy with the cloud head was scary and when the squeaking apps attacked VMware President, Carl Eschenbach, you sensed that he really did want to kick one of the little guys…
- Applications are becoming Hybrid, Driving the Need for the Unified Hybrid Cloud
VMware has been talking about “Hybrid Cloud” for a while, but at VMworld 2015 it become “Unified”. The change to me was the focus on applications. Why do you need a “Hybrid Cloud”? Because we all know that applications are becoming Hybrid for cloud native apps, as enterprises seek to use SaaS versions of their applications and as multi-tier apps become have cloud and on-premise components…
- Two VMware Options to Leverage Containers: vSphere Integrated Containers and VMware Photon Platform
VMware spent a lot of time talking about their approach for cloud native applications and at VMworld they put some meat and products behind the story.
- For customers who want to use containers within their infrastructure, VMware announced VMware vSphere Integrated Containers, to allow a VMware environment to recognize the characteristics of the container and the VM.
- For customers developing CNAs from scratch, they announced that “they would create a new platform. The approach builds on “project photon” announced in Feb 2015, and becomes VMware Photon Platform.
- VMware Workspace Suite Takes Shape
For a couple of years, VMware has been talking about End User Computing in terms of “how end users access applications on multiple devices”, which encompassed mobility. At VMworld the products behind this vision became much more clear with SDDC as the underlying infrastructure, Desktop VDI consisting of traditional VDI, Mobility Management as defined by AirWatch as the second pillar, and new content collaboration tools as the third pillar of the VMware Workspace Suite
- Best Quote of the Keynote – from a Customer!
- Virtustream for Managed Unified Hybrid Cloud
Virtustream is now a Federation company, joining EMC, VMware, Pivotal, RSA and VCE. CEO Rodney Rogers outlined the value proposition for managed services above the virtualization layer. By aggregating unused infrastructure capacity into what Rogers called micro-VMs, Virtustream can drive tremendous improvements in resource utilization – and save lots of money on hardware…
- EVO Rack Becomes EVO SDDC / EVO SDDC Manager
More name changing from VMware, but the change makes sense to me… While this integrated, converged infrastructure + SDDC platform has been for some time with versions from suppliers like EMC, the full “Rack” version including VMware NSX and management has not been announced. EVO SDDC seems to come in 2 versions – one with the converged hardware and the full SDDC, and one that has the SDDC portion that enables you to manage an existing hardware stack.
- NSX is a Game Changer – Architect Security into the SDDC
NSX has been around for 2 years and VMware talked about customer momentum that was “horizontal” (not limited to a few verticals or really big companies). The Network was positioned as the underlying fabric needed for a unified hybrid cloud – but security is a gap today that the micro-segmentation of NSX uniquely solves.
- Hybrid Networking is the “tough problem”: Solved by NSX in for the Unified Hybrid Cloud
Organizations cannot get to the agility they need with the current network bottleneck. By providing a virtualized layer customers are finding that NSX gives them the network services they need across boundaries – including cross-cloud vMotion!
And the #1 VMworld Moment is “Cross-Cloud vMotion”
In the Monday General Session, VMware CTO Ray O’Farrell and VP of Engineering Yangbing Li demonstrated this capability, which I believe they said as in “Tech Preview” at VMworld. The industry has been looking for long distance for a while and demo of cross-cloud seemed pretty darn exciting to the audience…
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Predictions for the Future Path of the Data Center…
VMworld US is a few weeks behind us, VMworld Europe is in our sights and HP Discover will provide plenty of news to finish off the year. The stream of tech industry news keeps coming with lots of buzzwords, but also lots of real change. I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of the data center and the tech industry – “Where is this path taking us?”
Regular readers of my blog will know that my focus is on the go-to-market (GTM) approach used by leading technology companies to connect their products to customers. GTM encompasses corporate strategy, product marketing, specialties within marketing, sales, sales engineering, consulting, channels of all types – and all sorts of “operations” from sales ops to channel ops to professional services packaging and delivery. All of these pieces are required to “Build a Bridge” between your offerings and your customers.
As we’ve discussed, the current “best practices” in many of these areas leave a lot to be desired. These practices reflect what worked when the leading vendors sold hardware and the channel sold and implemented hardware. Of course, that has not been true for a long time, but that does not seem to keep tech companies from trotting out the same approach to GTM…
As the industry changes and the approach to the data center changes, the levers that drive GTM success also change – which is why I keep ruminating on the current path of the industry, and its impact on GTM. I covered some of the background on my perspective on the evolution of data center technologies – particularly the dramatic changes brought on on by VMware and virtualization. Those posts were part of a 3-part series, and are a good starting point in connecting the dots backward, so we can extend them forward to the future…
The Battle for the Next Generation of Networks: Where Will We End Up?
There has been a lot of press in the last couple of years on the next generation of the networking. The industry seems to have amassed a desire for change – but what form will that change take?
I talked about the evolution of the data center in a series of posts earlier this year called “Where is all this Going” and the second installment focused on the impact of VMware and virtualization and the pent up demand for change in the network. I was talking to a friend and colleague a few weeks ago who worked at VMware starting in 2000 – long before VMware even had ESX… He’s now involved in developing products for the next generation of networks and I asked him a simple question,“
“How does the level of customer pain from the network today compare to the pain to customers experienced from server sprawl and the inflexibility from physical servers back in 2003?”
What’s Next on the “Cloudy” VAR Landscape: What’s a VAR To Do …?
If you’ve read previous posts for my “Climbing Out of the Box” Blog, you may have noticed that the point of view is from the vendor perspective – e.g. “How do I sell more of my product to customers?” You also may have noticed that the #1 piece of advice has been to “put yourself in the shoes of the customer” to understand their challenges and how your company could help, so that you can market and sell your products as part of solutions that connect to the customer perspective.
The same dynamic holds true for your sales channels and your channel partners. As the customer requirements for buying IT products move toward solutions, outcomes, software and SaaS/cloud services (rather than hardware and point products,) your channel has had to evolve from the traditional hardware-centric model. For your company to be successful, you need to be talking to your partners to understand the channel perspective, and you need to be taking steps to create new sales opportunities for you and your channel partners that reflect the changing sales and channel model…
Guest Blog Post from Thom McAleer (more…)
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