My first experience of VMworld

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This year was my first at VMworld Europe in Barcelona,  and during the incredibly busy week we saw lots of great announcements. This post will summarise my experience of VMworld 2017. 

This year, VMware made their vision and focus of Any Application, on Any Device and Any Cloud very clear which was supported by all other messaging at the conference resonating this.

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The first day of the event was kicked off with the partner exchange sessions which all resonated with the key messaging of VMware and building technology for the future of a more secure mobile hybrid cloud vision. 

Pat Gelsinger took to the stage for the partner keynote and he expressed to us that whilst VMware are still a leader in virtualisation technologies, they are also heavily focusing on other areas of technology. Pat quoted that 'VMware used to be the screwdriver, now they are the whole toolbox'. 

I then attended other breakout sessions such as 'The benefits of upgrading to vSphere 6.5'. This was such a eye opening presentation for me as vSphere seems to be something many of us over look once installed, but the benefits when you upgrade to the latest version are something you shouldn't ignore. Take a look at the benefits and what's new with vSphere 6.5 here

I also attended a security session (with a twist) in the afternoon. This session was presented by Keren Elazari @K3R3N3 who actually used to be a hacker but has turned her passion and knowledge from her past to help organisations in health care that have an enormous risk when it comes to ensuring all their systems are protected. 

The second day, the conference centre was full with over 11,000 attendees, making 2017 VMworld Europes biggest event yet!  

The general session was kicked off with Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO who set the scene, talking about VMware vision, vSphere 6.5 being central the business and vision but touching upon how new technologies such as NSX and AppDefens are at the core of the business. VMware are making a clear transition to focusing heavily on security products.

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VMware believe that certain security measure should be standard within a business and have raised the bar with basic security with their Security hygiene offering. Pat discussed how their security products are the secret sauce and how everyone needs to stop ‘fighting bad and start ensuring good’. As Pat discussed, NSX is now at the heart of everything VMware does from now on and stated that if you are not using NSX already, then you are already behind!

The highlight for myself (and most people) was when Pat was joined on stage by Alan Renouf to demonstrate the capabilities of the VMware suit through Virtual Reality. Pat and Alan demonstrated how to move a VM from on premises to vSphere on AWS.  

The third day consisted of another keynote session headed up by Pat Gelsinger, Sanjay Poonen and Ray O'Farrell. The three VMware leaders answered questions from the audience that were given to them prior to the event. There was some very interesting questions and some even more interesting and inspiring answers to them. They discussed VMware partnerships, technologies 

Chris Wolf and Purnima Padanabhan conducted a series of demos through a fictional case study (Elastic Sky Pizza) to show how VMware delivers on many of their customer goals to deliver: 

  • next generation frameworks 
  • hybrid cloud  
  • new consumption models (SaaS delivered products) 
  • supporting and enabling everyone in the business. 
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Chris and Purnima then spoke about IoT, including VMware Funtions-as-a-Service (FaaS) edge computing which you can find out more about here. 

Overall, this conference was an incredible experience to meet some industry leaders and influencers, get my hands on some of the technology and of course learn more about VMware's vision and technologies. 

Below are a collection of snapshots I created whilst at the conference. These summarise some of the key quotes from the conference.