VMworld 2017 Day 1 - General Session
VMware VMworld VMworld 2017
Published on 12 September 2017 by Christopher Lewis. Words: 609. Reading Time: 3 mins.
This year I decided not to sit in the General Session but watch it from the hang space to see what that was like. I think I prefer the General Session Room as it is more of an immersive experience. However, the ability to use a table/desk to take notes does help lots!
General Session
The General Session, with Pat Gelsinger, was very similar to the one in Las Vegas - it was only 2 weeks ago after all . There we obvious changes for the European community, especially with the reference customers. The key message was consistent from the previous years at VMworld and continued to be around Any Cloud, Any Application, Any Device.
Pat walked us through the each of the layers, concentrating on VMware WorkSpace One for the end user device layer. Moving onto the Private Cloud, Pat talked about VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), DellEMC VxRack/VxRail and, of course, VMware vSphere 6.5.
Moving onto the Public Cloud space, Pat talked about VMware’s partnership with IBM Public Cloud and announced the initial availability of VMware HCX (which will enable Zero-Down Migration between a customer’s private cloud and IBM Public Cloud).
Pat moved on to introduce a new type of Cloud partnership, the VMware Cloud Verified (VCV) Cloud Partner. A VCV Cloud Partner demonstrates a deep commitment to VMware Technologies. Initially, these partners will include Fujitsu, OVH, Rackspace and IBM Cloud. Finally, Pat introduced the new set of VMware Cloud Services. These new services include Discovery, Cost Insight, Wafefront, Network Insight, NSX Cloud, AppDefense and Workspace ONE.
Next Pat was joined on stage by Alan Renouf who guided Pat through a VR demonstration of what managing a future Virtual DC would be like (thanks to an internal VMware #Hackathon). This was the #geek highlight of the General Session. #BestTechDemoEver
Sanjay Poonen then took time to talk to representatives from Liberty Global and Swisscom to talk about how they are using VMware products to transform their industry.
Moving back to Pat, he reminisced about the past and the introduction of VMware ESX but was also excited for the future with VMware NSX. VMware believe that VMware NSX is the #SecretSauce that binds the SDDC and Public Cloud together. If you’re not using VMware NSX are you already behind the curve, building technical debt and at a competitive disadvantage?
Sanjay Poonen then sat and talked to a representative from Society Generale to discuss about how they are using VMware NSX.
Finally back to Pat to talk about the unnecessary elephant in any room, Security. In this section, Pat talked about three main themes in VMware’s security: Cyber Hygiene, Secure Infrastructure and Integrated Ecosystem. He talked about how VMware are enabling a new approach to Cyber Security because of the challenges that the modern world faces. He introduced the 5 pillars of Cyber Hygiene: Least Privilege, Micro-Segmentation, Encryption, Multi-Factor Authentication and Patching. Finally Pat talked about how VMware plan to approach GDPR.
We then moved back to Sanjay where we then heard from the InteliPro and NDE Africa who are having a massive impact in Africa using VMware technologies.
Sanjay closed out the General Session talking about VMware’s Digital Transformation vision which is, in his words, #SesameStreetSimple.
You can watch the playback of the general session here .
Note: Pictures taken from multiple sources.
Key Announcements
In summary, the new key announcements from the session were:
- The release of VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO) 4.0 to support mainly TelCo consumers.
- The initial availability of VMware HCX.
- The partnership of VMware, IBM and Dell for Public Cloud solution.
- The release of the VMware Cloud Verified partnerships.
- The release of new VMware Cloud Services.
Published on 12 September 2017 by Christopher Lewis. Words: 609. Reading Time: 3 mins.
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