Expect To Be Busy After VMworld 2013
There is so much to cover that I am expecting this year's VMworld to have some juicy announcements. VMware is involved on so many fronts with announcements expected in force around the hybrid cloud, software-defined networking/storage/datacenter and end-user computing. Of course the show would not be complete this year without some kind of announcement on new versions of current products with vSphere.next being the front and center product that everyone is looking forward to hearing about.
VMware has a lot on its plate but one thing is for certain: The hybrid cloud conversation will dominate the show's theme and messaging, as is evident by the conference tag line, "Defy Convention" which I take to mean they will be channeling a lot of effort into driving enterprise IT to change its ways, change its methods and start leveraging the public cloud for workload shifting, bursting, test and dev and a slew of other things. I have been saying this for some time now but I think it is more relevant today than ever before.
Today we say "justify a physical server," as the default has become a virtual machine. Moving forward we will start saying "justify placement in our private cloud as opposed to our hybrid or public cloud." In order for VMware to make this messaging work and to sprinkle some dazzle and excitement around its hybrid cloud, it is inevitable that the same tools that are used to manage the virtual infrastructure today be seamlessly extended to manage that hybrid cloud. Workload shifting should not need to happen from a different location, it should simply be a different cluster, folder, etc., on the inventory hierarchy.
The other announcement I am particularly interested in is software-defined networking (SDN). VMware's acquisition of Nicira stirred some backlash from VMware partner Cisco, which has since quieted down a bit. VMware paid a hefty price for Nicira and I am wondering how much we'll see of Nicira technology at VMworld. I am actually expecting a big splash!
Turning to software-defined storage, I think many people are anticipating learning more about some announcements that were made last year and how those have evolved, The VMware teams on the ground have also been touting some huge announcements around vSAN. Rumors are flying around that vSAN will negate the need for some converged infrastructure and storage vendors. I find that extremely hard to believe, but the show is a few weeks away and we shall see. Unless VMware makes an acquisition in this area -- which I highly doubt, given its parent company is EMC -- vSAN will be a cool technology but only when put into perspective.
On the end-user computing front, there is also a lot of talk about the many expected announcements on mobility, View and others. I am wondering, however, if VMware will announce any kind of an acquisitions here. At the beginning of this year I predicted a quiet acquisition year in general, especially for a company like Citrix that acquired a lot of companies last year and should focus on integration. I didn't expect VMware to do much, except maybe one or two acquisitions to bolster its portfolio. While I would love to see them buy up something in the EUC space, I think there is plenty of opportunity for VMware to pick up some quality startups.
I am interested in your thoughts, so please share here.
Posted by Elias Khnaser on 08/12/2013 at 2:07 PM