VMworld US 2016 live blogstream announcement

VMworld US 2016 at ITQ headquarters

Although I’m not in Las Vegas to attend VMworld US 2016 in person, I’m really excited about this years edition. My colleagues Johan van Amersfoort (vhojan.nl) and Marco van Baggum (vmbaggum.nl) are actually in Vegas now. Thankfully, VMware provides live streams to the General Sessions and we will be watching todays opening keynote and general session from ITQs headquarters in Wijk aan Zee while enjoying a couple of nice American style burgers. I will join most of my ITQ co-workers in Barcelona for the Europe edition by the way. As always ITQ will be massively represented at VMworld Europe!

Anticipation and excitement

I think this years edition of VMworld is the most anticipated one in years. The x86 server virtualization market is pretty saturated, Microsoft keeps pushing Hyper-V in very aggressive ways and the big cloud providers are chipping away at VMware’s business. VMware is clearly looking for ways to reinvent itself and everyone sympathetic to VMware is looking eagerly for a renewed pivot strategy. VMware is doing great with relatively new products such as Virtual SAN and of course NSX. Sales are skyrocketing and these are still open, unsaturated markets. I also hope VMware advances on its Cloud Native Apps strategy and has a clear go-to market plan. There were lots of exciting announcements last year around Photon and I’m curious how things are developing.

VMware and public cloud computing(?)

From both a personal and professional interest, I’m very keen on knowing how VMware wants to position itself in the public (hybrid) cloud market. vCloud Air has had a tumultueus year. There is no denying of that fact. I really hope VMware can create a meaningful role for itself in the cloud management, -orchestration and -automation layers. I think vCloud Director (vCD) is still an amazing (and perhaps the most under-appreciated) product of VMware. Cloud service providers can build amazing solutions with vCD, especially when combined with NSX. NSX will undoubtedly play a major rol in VMware’s hybrid cloud approach because networking is often still a very big hurdle to take in (hybrid) cloud projects. NSX has the potential of solving a lot of the common network problems customers face when extending to a cloud environment.

Live blogstream at 9:00am PT/18:00 GMT+1

I will be providing a live blogstream during todays General Session and will try to capture all major announcements made today at http://jeffreykusters.nl/liveblog-vmworld-us-2016-1st-general-session so tune in if you are unable to watch the general session yourself!