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A Tale of Two VMworlds

A look back at highlights from VMworld Las Vegas and VMworld Barcelona 2017

Written By Chris Paap, Technical Product Manager, SolarWinds

Each season has its signaling change that becomes more habitual and ritualistic than anything else, whether it's a family vacation or the notoriously procrastinated spring cleaning. In my case, the seasons in Texas are more of a state of mind, since you generally have either "crazy hot" or "hot." Nevertheless, VMworld^® has become part of my end-of-summer ritual that I look forward to on a yearly basis, but this year was a bit different from years past. Not only did I attend VMworld Vegas, but I had the opportunity to attend VMworld Barcelona, and both did not disappoint. 

By far the biggest announcement at VMworld this year was the availability of VMware^® on AWS^®.  Rather than take AWS head on, VMware made the strategic decision to partner with the cloud behemoth. Based on my discussions with attendees, the announcement was well received. Most of the AWS breakout sessions I attended were filled to capacity with attendees eager to learn more. VMware customers who like the familiarity of vCloud^® Director (and its suite of software) were excited by the prospect of using existing tools to deploy and manage their cloud infrastructure. The ease of use that made VMware so successful in its early days is just as prevalent in its transition to VMware on AWS. The Pivotal Container Service and VMware's new application security, AppDefense^TM, rounded out the announcements and garnered interesting discussions from curious attendees. However, nothing dominated my attendee interactions as much as VMware NSX^®. The difference in how VMworld attendees approached NSX from VMworld 2016 to 2017 at both Las Vegas and Barcelona was night and day. At VMworld 2016, attendees were still trying to wrap their heads around how they might use NSX in their environment and determine what they needed to support an NSX ecosystem. VMworld 2017 had much more informed attendees who, instead of trying to figure out NSX, were deciding when they would implement the technology. Many attendees also discussed implementation practices and performance benefits.

The breakout sessions continue to be top notch (especially the extreme performance series and performance deep dives) and I learn something new at each session. Yet the highlight for me at every VMworld is the attendee interaction. As a Product Manager, I talk to a lot of IT administrators, but nothing compares to talking tech with different administrators at VMworld. The engagement between attendees is extremely high and I always come away feeling like I have gained ten times as much knowledge than what I was able to provide. A technology's strength is found in the community that supports it, and I look forward to welcoming next year's hot fall with another trip to VMworld.  

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