VMworld Almost Upon Us
VMworld, as you're undoubtedly aware, is a little more than two weeks away, in Las Vegas. This year's show promises to be one of the most interesting ever.
First is the change at the top, with Paul Maritz headlining his first show. Maritz has impressed me so far, enduring a number of serious company stumbles with aplomb. His keynote will be well worth attending.
Second, VMware faces its first serious competition -- ever. Rivals are lining up, both big -- can you say Microsoft, Citrix, Oracle and Sun? -- and small, as new virtualization products hit the market almost daily. At present, VMware is the market leader, and aggressively working to build on its lead. It's recently responded to Hyper-V's free price by giving away its core hypervisor, ESX; an important recognition by VMware that market forces are having an impact.
Finally, VMware is experiencing serious sales challenges, especially to its Enterprise License Agreements, which have really tanked in the last year. The steady revenue stream that ELAs provide is crucial to a company like VMware, and had a lot to do with the feeble stock performance of late.
Maritz has promised changes on all these fronts; VMworld will give us the first opportunity to see how that will happen.
In the meantime, Virtualization Review will have a full contingent of editors at the show: myself, Executive Editor Tom Valovic and Editor in Chief Doug Barney will be diligently following all the news that comes out of the conference. We'll be blogging regularly and writing lots of news stories, so check the site often. If you see me at the show (I'll be all over), please stop and say hi. I love meeting readers.
Posted by Keith Ward on 08/26/2008 at 12:48 PM