5 Questions For VMworld 2014 to Answer

This will be my first VMworld in many years; I went regularly "back in the day," as we old-timers say (does 50 qualify me for "old-timer" status? I'm not there yet, but will be in a few too-short months), but haven't made any for the last half-decade. We've been running a series of articles on VMworld 2014, and I wanted to add my voice to the list here. Here are some of the questions I'll be asking, hoping to get answered.

1. How are y'all? I need to get to know you, the readers, once again. I had a strong rapport with readers in my first go-round here, and would like to pick that up again. For me, it's crucial to be talking with you (and for you to be talking with me, too.) I want -- no, I need -- to know what issues are important to you. What do you want to learn from this Web site, and the magazine? What are the biggest problems you find with your virtualized environments? What kinds of how-to's and tutorials would you like to see? What vendors do you like, and which do you avoid? Let's get the dialogue going again.


2. What's the vibe this year at the show? You can tell a lot about a company by how juiced its customers are. Will there be great excitement at announcements made during the keynotes, or a "been there, heard that" sort of feeling. Genuine applause, or forced applause, led by VMware employees? I want to see how you feel about VMware, in other words.


3. Meeting the vendors. I'll be taking tons of meetings this year, re-orienting myself with the lay of the virtualization land. Vendors in this space were the most innovative in IT when I moved off the magazine; are they still the most innovative?


4. What are the most promising areas of growth? Cloud, of course, will get the lion's share of attention. But what's happening in VDI? SDN (an acronym I was only vaguely aware of until recently)? Storage? Backup/Disaster Recovery -- and should those concepts be separated? Have some areas just not progressed much, and have found their niche? It will be interesting to see how much has changed.


5. Just how much have I forgotten? I feel like a total newbie in virtualization, although I was once well-versed. I'll be playing a lot of catch-up, so forgive any stupid questions coming from me.

Posted by Keith Ward on 08/11/2014 at 12:44 PM