Doing the VMware Dance Day 3
VMware Day 1 Summary
The first official day of VMworld found me running from meeting to meeting. I did find a short time to walk the show area. This offered the opportunity to speak with several users of virtualized environments and various vendors who are part of the VMware ecosystem.
Customer Conversations
When the users of virtualized environments discussed why they embarked on their individual journeys, the reasons differed. Consolidation figured prominently in their discussions. Few were seeking better performance or higher levels of reliability. Some were seeking the dramatic cost savings described in industry market.A few of them told me that they were seeing a difference. Others indicated they were just beyond the pilot project stage and hadn't seen dramatic savings as of the moment. When I asked them if they had developed a virtualization architecture or had just started with products and built around them, it became clear that many organizations are starting with a specific product and worked from there. I suspect that this group will face issues as they move to broaden their use of various types of virtualization technology.
Trade Show Area
The trade show area was busy every time I had a moment to visit. It was striking to compare the trade show area of VMworld to that of OpenSource World/NGDC/CloudWorld. Although I didn't spend the time to speak with everyone, I spent a few moments with:- Althor Networks,
- Appistry,
- Aprius,
- Citrix
- Fortisphere,
- Liquidware Labs,
- Microsoft
- Neocleus,
- OpSource,
- Platform Computing,
- rPath,
- Stratus,
- Tranxition,
- Virtual Computer
- VMLogix,
- Virtual Instruments and, of course
- VMware
Hmmm. Where was Oracle?
In most cases these vendors where demonstrating products that they had mentioned in previous meetings. I saw quite a very very innovative products. I was surprised how many people recognized me and came over to say hello. I guess I didn't offend them too much when I posted something on their product announcement briefing.