VMworld “day 0” was really just a
precursor to what we’ll be seeing for the rest of the week. Today,
there were no major sessions, but attendees were treated to the early
opening of the exhibit floor where vendors galore have gathered to hawk
their wares.
As the biggest VMworld yet, it’s not a surprise that
the show floor is a lively place with an impressive cross section of the
virtualization market. In walking around the floor and getting an idea
for who has set up shop, there are some clear trends that are really
big this year:
- Solid
state storage. It seems like every other booth is a vendor selling
solid state storage hardware of some kind. Vendors include Tegile, Pure
Systems, Tintri, EMC, Dell, Nimbus Data, Nimble and many, many others.
It’s absolutely clear that inclusion of solid state in storage is the
future of storage and we’re seeing a number of players lining up to
capitalize on this revolution.
- Management and monitoring tools.
With tight budgets and a need to demonstrate good ROI and low TCO,
organizations are forced to maximize as fully as possible their
investments in IT infrastructure. In looking at the show floor, there
are a number of vendors selling solutions intended to address storage performance management issues, VMware performance monitoring and other needs.
- VDI.
Although virtual desktops have been discussed, dissected and debated
for a number of years, there are vendors galore on the trade show floor
that are hoping to capitalize on the promises of desktop virtualization.
It’s
crystal clear that virtualization remains a top priority for many
organizations and that the vendor space also has high hopes, as
evidenced by the sheer number of companies on the show floor.
More to come during the week!