{"id":11281,"date":"2011-06-10T08:29:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T08:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=11281"},"modified":"2011-06-10T08:29:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T08:29:00","slug":"vmware-forum-2011-dublin-and-my-2-cents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=11281","title":{"rendered":"VMware Forum 2011 Dublin \u2013 And My 2 Cents"},"content":{"rendered":"

I decided to peek over the fence and registered for this event that ran yesterday.  I was really hoping to learn a little about vSphere 5.<\/p>\n

On the positive side, VMware chose a great venue and it was very well dressed up.  There was also a very gut turnout with several hundred attendees.  And unfortunately, that\u2019s where I end the + comments.<\/p>\n

The keynotes kicked off.  The first one was some VMware Ireland bigwig who told us that VMware leads the way on management across the IT infrastructure.  We were shown a Gartner to back that up.  I\u2019ll bite my tongue for a moment.  They were focusing on 3 strands:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Private cloud: CIOs don\u2019t want to throw away their data centre\/computer room investments to go public cloud.  This is clever because this does not alienate people and it doesn\u2019t threaten them with unemployment.  The public cloud message is that only 15% of apps will go there and VMware offers you a hybrid solution with lots of hosting partners.  With this \u201cstandards based\u201d (with the \u201cstandard\u201d being that all players would use ESXi for virtualisation) then you could have a hybrid cloud spread across private and several public providers, with no service provider lock-in.  It\u2019s not that<\/em> simple but it\u2019s a nice concept.  I think they sold this well.<\/li>\n
  2. Applications: The common message is that we recognize the priorities of the business.  Application and information \u2013 deployment\/management\/security\/availability \u2013 are what they really care about.  I\u2019ve been preaching this since I started talking about private cloud last year.  VMware have bought a bunch of point solutions and bundled them as vOperations Suite.  We saw nothing<\/em> of it.  It smells like one of those awful<\/u> enterprise management frameworks from the late 1990\u2019s like CA Unicenter.  Integration came in the form of shortcuts appearing in a central control panel \"Smile\"<\/li>\n
  3. End user environment: VDI! VDI! VDI! \u2026 in the form of VMware View.  Allegedly there would be no need to patch the user environment any more and you\u2019d need less systems management.  Well, isn\u2019t that special!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Then the second keynote started with some bigwig from VMware UK.  It was a repeat.  Break time, I mingled, and then went to a session on vOperations where I was tortured by a repetitive presentation (saying much of what covered in the keynotes and repeating itself over and over) and slide deck on vOperations.  The UK bigwig sat in the back and didn\u2019t look too pleased at people paying more attention to their phones, iPads, or walking out.  I can absolutely confirm that I learned nothing from this session.  I wondered if the speakers were trained at the Stephen Elop school for presentation skills.<\/p>\n

    I was bored to tears.  And that\u2019s when I decided to bail out before the free lunch and skip sessions from the platinum sponsors such as IBM, HP, and Cisco.  I was hoping for way more from this event.  I know for certain that I was not alone.<\/p>\n

    One thing became clear from this.  VMware are dreadful at communicating about what they sell.  They must really rely on their resellers to get the message across.<\/p>\n

    OK, let\u2019s break some stuff down from my perspective.  I like how they sell the private cloud.  It\u2019s pretty much how I sell it \u2013 but I don\u2019t see it being pervasive.  I don\u2019t see everyone needing a private cloud \u2013 it depends on who deploys business applications in the business and who manages the server infrastructure.<\/p>\n

    On  the application management side \u2013 which is the<\/em> important part of the data center (and it pains me to say that), VMware are way behind Microsoft System Center.  SysCtr covers the entire stack from hardware to services with the user\/service perspective, and it manages the entire lifecycle from deployment to recycling.  The newer focus on automation, compliance\/governance, as well as consumerisation of IT (user centric computing) really puts System Center ahead of the pack.<\/p>\n

    Technorati Tags: VMware<\/a>,System Center<\/a>,Events<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I decided to peek over the fence and registered for this event that ran yesterday.  I was really hoping to learn a little about vSphere 5. On the positive side, VMware chose a great venue and it was very well dressed up.  There was also a very gut turnout with several hundred attendees.  And unfortunately, … Continue reading “VMware Forum 2011 Dublin \u2013 And My 2 Cents”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[177,193,103],"class_list":["post-11281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-virtualisation","tag-events","tag-system-center","tag-vmware"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}