VMworld 2018 - Day 1 Recap

VMworld 2018 kicked off with a packed general session and this years theme is all about you, with flashes across the main screen of "Choice Begins with You", and "Possible Begins with You."

VMware's CEO Pat Gelsinger took the stage and kicked things off talking about the theme of this VMworld, "You". Pat said that you are the VMware Community, you are the VMware Team, you are the Partners. Collectively we are wake makes VMware from its workers, to the community of customers, to the partner community assisting their customers through education, architecture, deployment, and further growth of their infrastructure.

This is VMware's 20th Birthday and as Pat states, they are almost old enough to go out for a drink. 

​Twenty years of innovation and being disruptors to the world of technology and that has not changed. VMware demonstrated at this years VMworld, that they are just as committed to being innovative within their own product lineup, and with the calculated partner decisions like AWS. Pat Gelsinger demonstrated his commitment to VMware and to moving the company to the next level through his newly minted VMware tattoo. ​

Pat Gelsinger spoke about VMware's unique role within the industry, bridging across silos through multiple iterations. 

Act one, as he stated it, was the "Server Wars", where VMware changed the industry with virtualization of the compute. Act two, was the introductions of "Virtual Desktop" technology supporting BYOD. Act, three was "Network Virtualization". Act four is "Cloud Migrations," for private and public clouds. What is the next act, you ask, "Multi-Cloud" through partnerships with the Super Powers of Technology, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and IBM with each being a super power on their own but stronger together. These partnerships make VMware the Tech Super Power for Cloud, Mobility, AI/ML, and Edge/IoT. Each of thes

Pat spoke about how through cloud you can rent cores by the hour and how with a swipe of an AMEX the industry has been transformed. Through mobility VMware has been able to reach over half of the humans on the earth although the most impoverished have not been and that VMware is committed to reaching them to. That is a lofty commitment but VMware wants to drive change, not just within technology but throughout the global communities, helping to elevate and change the lives of those in need. Through AI/ML VMware is bridging healthcare and designer treatments. Through partnerships with Mercy Ships, which run their infrastructure on VMware, and bring change to global communities that otherwise would not have access to some of the care we take for granted.

There was a lot of new announcements that came out of this first general session. Pat talked about the partnership with Amazon continues to transform and making VMware Cloud Foundations available to their partners to build cloud infrastructures.

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services joined Pat on stage to further discuss the relationship with VMware. He mentioned that the VMC on AWS offering is powerful in that it allows customers to utilize the technology they are familiar with along with all its benefits. The offering is growing at an astonishing rate, doubling every quarter.  

The number one use case for the VMC on AWS offering is for migrating on-prem applications to the cloud and gave an example of how MIT migrated over 3000 applications in a very short time. Disaster recovery for companies like BRINKS, is the next use case. 

The offering continues to expand into other regions across the globe with Sydney Australia being the latest announced. The number one request coming from customers is to have the VMC on AWS offering available in all AWS regions and in the Gov. Cloud. VMware is committed to accomplishing this goal by the end of 2019.

Three nodes for VMC on AWS along with vSAN utilizing Amazon EBS storage was also announced. This will reduce the initial entry costs into the hybrid-cloud and is in tech preview now. Another announcement was around bulk migrations along with a demonstration.

Amazon also announced Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) on VMware for on-prem deployments. VMware and Amazon are ramping up their offerings together with NSX and Direct Connect, Enterprise Application and License Migrations, Kubernetes, and much more.

VMware announced Project Dimension which delivers VMware cloud simplicity to data center and edge. Project Dimension will extend VMware Cloud to deliver SDDC infrastructure and hardware as-a-service to on-premises locations.  Because this is will be a service, it means that VMware can take care of managing the infrastructure, troubleshooting issues, and performing patching and maintenance.  This in turn means customers can focus on differentiating their business building innovative applications rather than spending time on day-to-day infrastructure management. ​

Another announcement out of VMworld was around the CloudHealth Technologies acquisition.  CloudHealth provides VMware  with a crucial multi-cloud management platform that works across AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, giving customers a way to manage cloud cost, usage, security and performance from a single interface.

This VMworld was packed full of great product enhancements, further partner integrations, and a lot more announcements. This clearly demonstrates that VMware is remaining a disruptive innovator in the industry; With enhancements in Workspace One, to announcements with a Blockchain project called Concord which is an open source project that promises to provide a more efficient approach to processing smart contracts based on distributed ledgers, to Dell Provisioning services for Workspace One, to integrating AppDefense with vSphere Platinum. 

There is no short of exciting things for everyone to dive into this VMworld and I look forward to the rest of the days to come.