Top 9 Take-aways from VMworld 2015

Number 1 – “Ready for Any”

This was the theme of VMworld 2015. And it seems that VMware is ready for any of the technical challenges we should all be aware of surrounding the vision of a unified hybrid cloud – including accessing an agile cloud platform for traditional and cloud-native applications and embracing enterprise mobility. In fact, VMware CIO Bask Iver made an analogy involving surfers, cloud and mobile. He said, “Yes, there is another wave coming, but someone has to clean the beach, then surf.” Get all of the keynotes here.

Number 2 – Can’t Contain Our Excitement

If you can’t beat them, join them. VMware is now seeing containers as a complementary technology to VMs with out-of-the-box integrations with Docker, Kubernetes and Cloud Factory. VMware vSphere Integrated Containers will allow you to map a single container engine to an individual VM. This will increase visibility. VMware also unveiled the Photon Platform to help run the cloud native apps.

Number 3 – Big Brother is Watching

VMware CEO Pat Gelsginer made a point in his keynote that Artificial Intelligence could be a powerful technology in the future. “We truly are entering an age of predictive technologies,” he said in his keynote. You can see this in evidence as the latest release of vSphere, for example, includes the capability to predict future usage of VMs by applications based on past performance.

Number 4 – Microsoft/VMware Love Fest

For the first time a Microsoft exec took to the stage at VMworld. Together the two companies announced the marriage of Windows 10 and VMware AirWatch to create Project A2 to support VMware’s vision of the hybrid cloud era. Project A2 will allow customers to build applications quicker and transfer all software into Windows 10 with a few simple clicks.

Number 5 – No Motion Sickness Here

Another cog in the hybrid cloud is what VMware calls hybrid networking services – which allows services to move throughout the private and public cloud. The revolutionary technology of vMotion continues to advance and VMware devotees were oohing and aahing as they watched the first public demo of moving a VM from a private datacenter to a public one.

Number 6 – Expo – Rockin’ Good Time

The biggies were there NetApp, Dell, Palo Alto Networks, joined by open source projects, like Docker, and tons of start-up innovations. Lots and lots and lots of t-shirts, enough to give your washing machine a rest for at least a month. Fun games – trivia, darts and even a strongman game @AirVM, party bus with ice cream floats @CDW, VW Microbus photo booth @Nexenta and all kinds of awesome prizes – like trips and bicycles.

Number 7 – EVO was the talk of the town

Continuing the mobile-cloud era theme, VMware announced VMware EVO SDDC – automated software suite that gives users access to VMware tools that touch each aspect of the data center — extending the virtualization principals of abstraction, pooling and automation across all data center resources and services.

“As one of the largest data center operators in the world, VMware EVO SDDC allows us to deploy a standardized, reliable and automated infrastructure solution at any data center location and rapidly deliver capacity to our tenants,” said Indranil Sengupta, senior director of Cloud Service Development, NTT America.

Number 8 – Shameless Plug

In case you didn’t get the chance to check out the ControlUp booth in what we called “Innovation Alley,” not to worry you can get a quick demo here of the best VDI monitoring and management platform.

Number 9 – Party Like it’s 1999

VMware knows how to throw a party! AT&T park was packed to the gills as the carnival happened all around us. Great music by the Neon Trees and Alabama Shakes provided a fantastic backdrop as we took advantage of the free ballpark treats, drank tons of beer and played all kinds of midway games.