VMworld 2014 Day 1 Keynote
Published on 25 Aug 2014 · Filed in Liveblog · 1237 words (estimated 6 minutes to read)This is a liveblog of the day 1 keynote at VMworld 2014 in San Francisco, CA. (Well, it’s a “semi-liveblog”; I’ll post this immediately after the keynote session wraps up.) As in previous years, the keynote is being held in the massive space in Moscone North, and this year—like previous years—it looks like there is quite a crowd gathered here this morning. I have the privilege of sitting with newly-minted VCDX-NVs and other VCDXes.
The keynote starts with a catchy, jazzy dance/music piece, and then Robin Matlock, Chief Marketing Officer for VMware, takes the stage. Matlock shares that over 22,000 people are gathered here for VMworld, which (if I recall correctly) is down a little bit from last year. Matlock talks about change, and how change can be either a barrier or an opportunity. That leads into a discussion of the building of the Golden Gate Bridge as an allegory for pushing boundaries, exploring endless possibilities, and expanding your knowledge and expertise. This fits into the “No Limits” theme for the conference this week.
After discussing “Operation Giveback” (a charity fundraiser backed by the VMware Foundation), Matlock turns the stage over to VMware’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, who comes onto the stage in a dramatic “breaking through” effect.
Gelsinger starts his portion of the keynote by introducing the “liquid world,” where change is paramount. Gelsinger provides some examples of various businesses that have embraced the “liquid business” model. The biggest risk to success, according to Gelsinger, is perpetuating the status quo. Change is inevitable. The best way to predict the future is to invent it, and Gelsinger says that’s what brave IT leaders need to do. This leads Gelsinger into a discussion of what the word “brave” means, and that in turn leads to a family-friendly discussion of the first day of school, a kid’s penalty shot in soccer, a driving test, or a public speaking event. Next up is a “who’s who” list of brave business leaders, like Elon Musk and the leader of 23andMe (I didn’t catch the spelling for her name). VMware is on a voyage of brave transformation itself, and Gelsinger provides examples of VMware’s BYOD efforts and running all of VMware’s SAP ERP efforts on vCloud Air.
Gelsinger brings the “fluid” and “brave” themes together in that brave IT involves fluidity and choice (and a third item I couldn’t catch). This leads into a discussion of the software-defined data center (SDDC). As a result of this discussion, Gelsinger goes into some announcements:
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VMware is announcing VMware vCloud Suite 5.8, which includes new suite “fit and finish” changes
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VMware is announcing vSphere 6.0 beta
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VMware is announcing VSAN 2.0 beta
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As part of the vSphere 6.0 beta, VMware is also announcing Virtual Volumes (VVols)
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VMware is rebranding the management suite as VMware vRealize Suite
The path to SDDC has three branches: “build your own”, converged infrastructure, and hyper-converged infrastructure. This leads Gelsinger to announce VMware EVO, which is VMware’s family of hyper-converged infrastructure offerings. EVO is the SDDC packaged with hardware to provide the fastest way to realize the benefits of the SDDC. The first member of the EVO family is EVO:RAIL, which is a “building” block designed at around 100 VMs of capacity and is designed to be up and running in 15 minutes. Hardware partners for EVO:RAIL include Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Inspur, Net One, and Supermicro.
The EVO Zone, found in the Solutions Exchange, has some examples of EVO products being brought to market.
The second member of the EVO family is EVO:RACK, which is being announced as a technical preview. EVO:RACK builds on EVO:RAIL for greater scale—basically building an “entire cloud” in 2 hours or less. There will be a range of certified hardware solutions available as EVO:RACK solutions. VMware is also joining the OpenCompute Project, and anticipates that EVO:RAIL and EVO:RACK will be available on OCP hardware.
Gelsinger also announces VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO), VMware’s own OpenStack distribution that will incorporate key VMware technologies like vSphere, VSAN, and NSX. VIO is available in beta.
Continuing the discussion around next-generation platforms, Gelsinger announces partnerships with Docker, Google, and Pivotal around building open container APIs and making containers run better on VMware’s SDDC platform–“containers without compromise.”
That leads Gelsinger into a discussion of security, and that naturally involves VMware NSX. Microsegmentation is becoming a key use case for customers adopting VMware NSX.
After a brief discussion of end-user computing—admittedly brief because Sanjay Poonen will be discussing this in more detail in tomorrow’s keynote—Gelsinger moves on to a discussion of hybrid cloud. VMware vCloud Hybrid Service has been rebranded to vCloud Air, and all VMware products that are offered “as a service” will be rebranded as part of the Air family. Gelsinger brings Bill Fathers, EVP & GM for Hybrid Cloud at VMware, onto the stage.
Fathers recaps what’s happened with vCloud Air over the last 12 months; the service was officially launched last year in the day 1 keynote at VMworld 2013. vCloud Air has been successful in meeting all of the goals originally announced. Fathers reviews the key benefits of using public cloud, especially VMware’s public cloud: agility, efficiency, and cost savings. Fathers discusses the various phases of cloud adoption, and states that he believes the market is currently transitioning from the experimental phase to the professional era.
For companies that are being successful transitioning into the professional era—which involves much greater use of public cloud resources—the two things these companies are doing is 1) thinking of the apps first; and 2) putting the IT professionals back in charge. According to Fathers, vCloud Air provides the perfect platform for accomplishing both of these goals, due in no small part because vCloud Air uses the same hypervisor, same VM formats, and same management tools as companies are using today in their private clouds.
Fathers announces a government-focused FedRAMP-compliant vCloud Air offering launching soon (September); this will be very useful for US government-focused partners, service providers, and systems integrators. VMware is also expanding the number of vCloud Air partners in the vCloud Air Network, with 3900 partners available around the world in over 100 countries. vCloud Air Network is, according to Fathers, the world’s largest hybrid cloud network.
Next Fathers moves into a discussion of new services and offerings available with vCloud Air. These new services include continuous integration as a service offering (CIaaS?), MySQL and MS SQL database-as-a-service offering (will later expand to all popular RDBMS, and will offer DR services for on-premises databases), object storage service based on EMC ViPR, AirWatch and Pivotal CloudFoundry mobile services, and vRealize Air Automation (which is hosted cloud management tools available as a SaaS). Fathers also announcing a beta of on-demand, PAYG (pay as you go) access to vCloud Air.
Fathers transitions back to Gelsinger, who wraps up the themes and announcements from the keynote, and introduces Carl Eschenbach, President and COO of VMware.
Eschenbach reinforces that the “engine of innovation” is alive and well at VMware, but it is the brave who drive change (referring to the VMworld attendees in the audience). That leads into a customer discussion between Eschenbach with three key customers: MedTronic, MIT IST (Information Systems and Technology), and Ford. Each of the customers comes out on the stage and has a brief conversation with Eschenbach.
At this point I had to leave to prepare for a session, so I wasn’t able to capture any of the rest of the keynote.