VMworld 2008 - Day 1
Overall the first real day here at VMworld was a good one. I was fortunate enough to partake in the TAM day which is always interesting. We discussed some of the newly announced vDatacenter OS, quite a bit about Site Recovery Manager product and the new directions of the VMware Desktop Manager product line. What is interesting is that the vDatacenter OS is not really a single product line. Its more of a framework layout. A set of potential coming APIs that will define all the interfaces openly across all the areas (vStorage, vNetwork, vCenter, vHypervizor (not real.. Just going to the underlying level that's missing in that main picture since its pretty much assumed and is already defined pretty well), vCloud (a standard API for a VM level component), vApps, vSecurity, ), vAvailability, vResourceManagent for example).
As I posted earlier today about the vDatacenter OS, I believe this to be the right direction. Sitting here in my room having time to process everything I heard and some reading I've been doing around the blogosphere has me even more impressed if its true. From my reading it appears that the new CEO Paul Maritz is still as sharp and on the ball as he ever was. His insight when he took the technical and marketing direction of the Windows OS from a miscellaneous OS in a field of OSes to the single most influential OS in the world in the 90s. Like Microsoft or hate them, you can't discount the power Windows has in the industry. I have no doubt that Paul was instrumental in this new higher level view of the datacenter for VMware. Now he's set his sights on what it will take to get VMware to where it needs to be in the industry. Its obvious that Paul is involved with the addition of the Cloud infrastructure concept to the master roadmap. He came from EMC as the President of Cloud Computing Division so this isn't much of a surprise. I understand the direction for VMware on this as many of us customers have been asking for things like this for a while. So far VMware has done fantastic and amazing things (ESX, VMotion, DRS, Workstation, Server, OVF, Open Standards) under Diane Greene and now that Paul is in charge, here's to the future growth of VMware.