VMworld 2013 Recap: VMware Day 1 General Session

VMware (VMW) already announced two new hires to the company’s payroll at this VMworld 2013 — and it’s only day one. At yesterday’s general session for partners, VMware said more than 2,000 partners registered for the event, and VMware Channel Chief Dave O’Callaghan reinforced channel simplicity around profitability, predictability and consistency. Here’s a quick recap of what some of the speakers had to say during today’s general session:

VMware CMO Robin Matlock

• A customer’s journey with virtualization follows three phases: IT production, business production and IT as a service. The majority of customers were in phase 1 last year, but are now in the second phase in 2013.

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger

• This period of disruption and change we are in has only been disruptive, looking back at the mainframe phase, client-server phase. Now our disruption continues into the mobile-cloud phase, where billions of users are intereacting with millions of applications.
• There are four trends shaping IT today: social, mobile, cloud and big data. Everything shaping IT today has at least one or two of these trends today.
• Virtualization is uniquely positioned to build the architecture of tomorrow, while reducing the cost of the infrastructure you have today. We’re building infrastructure to enable applications, not for fun. There are millions of apps out in the market and each app has its own unique requirements, combining IT trends with infrastructure.
• VMware customers will lead the mobile-cloud era. Some customers believe they are leaders of the universe, martyrs, gods, bull fighters, ninjas and dragon slayers, but one term explains it all: champions. We are the champions of the mobile-cloud era.
• We see three imperatives for the IT infrastructure: virtualization extends to all of it, and networking is the most important part of the discussion; IT management gives way to automation; and compatible hybrid cloud is ubiquitous.
• The four pillars of the SDDC: compute to all apps, transform storage by aligning it with app demand, virtualize the network speed and give way to automation through management tools. Compute will extend all apps to 100 percent, nothing less.
• We’re also announcing general available for vSphere 5.5 and vCloud Suite 5.5. We have opened Cloud Foundry, the leading hybrid PaaS, for early access. This will be generally available in fourther quarter of 2013.
• Storage is complex with its traditional applications and next gen cloud apps. Storage itself is becoming more complicated with hybrid arrays, all SSD array, server-side flash, object/ BLOB and virtual storage arrays.
• Software-defined storage contains three elements: policy-driven control plane, virtualization of the data plane and virtualization of application-centric data services.
• We’re announcing four storage announcements to: VMware Virtual San, Virtual Volumes, Virsto, and vSphere Flash Read Cache.
• Networking is the most important topic we talk about today. The barrier to flexibility is becoming the network. With network virtualization, we are moving the network, which includes programmatic provisioning, decoupled from hardware, operationally efficient.
• Today we are announcing VMware NSX to satisfy network virtualization. More than 20 partners are announcing their integration with the VMware NSX. “This is the coming out party for network virtualization.”
• We are delivering the control plane of the management future. We must replace traditional IT management with VMware cloud management. We have expanded our offerings to include provisioning, operations and financial for cloud management.
• Hybrid means for VMware: any app, any place, no comprise. This is your cloud — what you need for your businesses. Hybrid cloud must include common management, common networking, common security and common support.
• We are announcing the general availability of our VMware vCloud Hybrid Service — the first and only hybrid cloud service. “I’m standing in front of the most disruptive force in the industry today.”

VMware Hybrid Cloud Services Business Unit Vice President and General Manager Bill Fathers

• The vCloud service launched in June of 2013 and the program was oversubscribed. We gained some incredible insight on how our customers are using our services. Our product cycle is every six weeks, so we were able to throw feedback back into it.
• What’s next: disaster recovery as a service, Cloud Foundry will be generally available in the fourth quarter and desktop as a service.
• We announced two SAVVIS data centers in Chicago and New York.

Stay tuned for more VMworld 2013 updates.