It’s mid summer and for myself and my fellow ITQ consultants it means that it’s the time of the year to start planning VMworld. The session catalogs are live and events around VMworld are being planned by vendors. In this post I would like to give you an idea of some of the things that I am really looking forward to.
VMworld Las Vegas
The first of the two conferences is held in Las Vegas for the second time in a row (due to the renovation of the Moscone Center in San Francisco). The Mandalay Bay Hotel and Conference Center will transform into the biggest virtualization event of the world. One of the greatest things about the US conference is that (as it is the first of the two), this is the one where most announcements will be done. As VMware is moving towards hybrid cloud solutions with most of their products (VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Horizon Cloud, Workspace ONE), my estimate is that more announcements will be done from that angle. As the target GA date for VMware Cloud on AWS is near, I’m pretty sure that we will see a lot more of the integration between VMware’s on-premises data center solutions and Amazon’s cloud solution during the conference. From an EUC perspective, I’m hoping for more DaaS partners. Horizon on Azure was announced a couple of months ago, so it would be great if VMware’s DaaS offering would also be available on Amazon and Google (including GPU support). Also, as Internet of Things (IoT) is quite hot at the moment, my estimate is that VMware will announce something around that topic as well. Last but not least, VMware Wavefront was introduced as a realtime cloud-based metrics analytics and monitoring product. I’m quite excited to see what that is all about.
And of course, there is the solutions exchange. All vendors in the VMware ecosystem get the chance to show off their newest products and give you the opportunity to network with them. One of them will end up as “Best of VMworld”. Let’s see who is going to be Rubrik’s successor as they have won last year.
For the second time in a row, I will be part of a group discussion around VMware’s EUC products. Except for this year, I will actually be on stage. The session is organized by the VMware EUC Champion group and gives attendees the possibility to ask everything they ever wanted to know about VMware’s EUC products. Last year it was a great success, let’s hope it is going to be even better this year!
VMworld Barcelona
The VMworld conference in the US is quite bigger than the European version, but nevertheless the smaller of the two has a lot to offer (and in some cases, even more!). First of all, chances are really big that you will meet me or one of my colleagues, as The Dutch Orange Glasses are attending VMworld Europe with 30 people. A new ITQ record.
For the first time, the two conferences are organized quite shortly after each other. If you look at the way the announcements have been done in the past, this could mean that all announcements will done in the US. But, on the other hand, it could also mean that they will spread the announcements between the two editions. I’m hoping for the last one of course!
One big advantage of the the European conference is the number of Dutch attendees. Last year there were over 700 Dutch attendees which is great for networking. Highlight from that perspective was the VMware Benelux Village party where customers, partners, community members and VMware employees joined together for a food truck festival, drinks and music. A great night and an absolute recommendation for this year!
Another personal highlight is going to be my first breakout session. As a VMware EUC Champion and VCDX-DTM, I will be explaining and showing how Workspace ONE’s Identity Manager and Airwatch can be integrated with the Horizon products to distribute applications and desktops to and end user. Really excited!
As you can read, VMworld 2017 has a lot to offer and I hope to see you all at one of the conferences!
