VMworld 2016 - Day 1 Recap

VMware Day 1 began with a study of the migratory patterns of the typical geek. As you can see from the video captured below, they seem to migrate together once a year for this thing called "VMworld". 

VMware opened the General Session with a poem of sorts that was reminiscent of a 70s acid trip. The poem was reflective of the motto for VMworld 2016, Be Tomorrow.

After the poem, VMware's CEO Pat Gelsinger took the stage to a very segmented audience. The turn out to VMworld is huge, so the General Session was in multiple locations along with a live stream. Pat spoke about a big shift happening in technology. The shift from "DIY" to Service Provider Data Centers and how the shift started in 2011. Pat said this a Traditional business vs Digital business and that “all business is driven by digital” now.

The talk then shifted to discuss a brief history of "Cloud" and he spoke about Google and their place in cloud history starting back in 2006. This is the time when Pluto lost its status as a planet and Italy beat out Germany for the World Cup. This is also the year that Eric Scmidt of Google introduced the term "Cloud".

In 2006 we see that 98% of all workloads are running, as what we now call Traditional IT with only 2% running in the cloud which was Sales Force. Moving 5 years forward we see a shift to 7% of workloads running Public Cloud, and 6% as Private On-Prem. Today we see the shift continuing to 73% as Traditional, 12% Private On-Prem and 15% as Public Cloud. By 2021 analyst estimate that we will hit the 50% mark for Cloud. Cloud will just continue to gain ground and IT will need to continue to innovate and adapt to remain relevant and agile. VMware again is leading the charge with the announcement and the launch of Cloud Foundation.

Cloud Foundation is a unified SDDC platform that comprises VMware’s vSphere, Virtual SAN, and NSX into an integrated stack. This will help IT deliver enterprise-ready cloud infrastructure for the private On-Prem and public clouds which a lot of companies are already doing but with a lot of added complexities of management and monitoring. Cloud Foundation will bring  a single pane of glass for managing those complexities that come along with multiple clouds. 

Cloud Foundation will work with all major cloud providers, Azure, AWS, Google, Virtual Stream and of course VMware's own vCloud Air and in partnership with IBM.

Some of the major operational challenges that organizations are going to and are faced with in a multi-cloud environment will be around networking and security. Traditional networking practices continue to impact the agility and security of today's networks along with complexities around migrating applications to the cloud. Cloud Foundation will help with these challenges since it has products like NSX running to flatten the network architecture across the multiple clouds including On-Prem. NSX will provide a more simplified way of connecting their environments along with security profiles and tighter security with micro-segmentation and the partner integrations like Palo Alto, Trend Micro and many more.

There were a lot of vendors around the event today the touted a "Single Pane of Glass" for managing multi-cloud environments. I spoke with a few of them and they didn't know about VMware's announcement for Cloud Foundation. None of them seemed to do it as flawless as VMware. The Cloud Foundation from VMware brings that true single entry for management including SLA/Availability dashboard, Policy-based placement and optimization, UI and API-driven cloud service broker, Centralized multi-cloud cost accounting and Workload migration.

VMware's Cloud Foundation is not just available in private data centers, but as a service from the announced partnership with IBM. 

VMware's CEO Pat Gelsinger continued his discussion around the cloud and who is embracing it today. He mentioned the top ten that are embracing the cloud. So who is embracing the cloud? Construction came in at #10, Manufacturing #5, Banks at #4 and Technology Vendors came in at #1. The point here is that as a technology vendor we are the ones leading our customers and companies to the cloud.

Of course we cannot have a 2016 VMworld without Dell's CEO, Michael Dell. Michael Dell said that as soon as the deal to acquire EMC closes “you will see a whole new series of engineered solutions we have been working on together.”

Overall, I thought is was exciting to learn about the new products. VMware has made some mistakes with the cloud and this demonstrates and new focus on not just their cloud but a shift to Any Cloud, Any App, and Any Device. The live demos of the Cloud Foundation was extremely impressive along with bringing in the powerhouses of Columbia Sportswear and CITI both talking about how VMware has transformed their businesses allowing for them to be more secure and more agile.

After the General Session there were a lot of people hanging out at the VMVillage. There were people playing at the ping-pong tables, talking to the experts and of course VMUG.

The VMUG booth had a line out the door. Members and non-members waiting to spin the VMUG wheel, take fun pics in the RockOutVMUG booth and much more. 

​The hands-on labs were packed with people and the #1 lab was on VMware's network virtualization product NSX. Virtual SAN came in a strong second with Automation bringing up third.

If you were unable to make it out to VMworld don't despair because the hands-on labs are available for you to but at the convenience of your home. You can  access the labs here and see the list of hands-on labs content catalog here. There are some great labs on NSX and Automation.

Overall the day was very productive and I enjoyed the announcement of Cloud Foundation. If you would like to learn more about Cloud Foundation you can see the VMware page here.