Another year and another VMworld attended by thousands of your peers and customers. I wanted to make sure everyone received all the exciting announcements, updates and links to Keynotes from the General sessions.
Product Announcements and Releases:
- IBM and VMware Expand Partnership to Enable Easy Hybrid Cloud Adoption
- VMware Unveils New Cross-Cloud Architecture™ to Give Customers Cloud Freedom and Control
- Cross-Cloud: A Common Operating Environment Across Private and Public Clouds
- The Foundation for Future Cloud Development
- VMware Extends Capabilities of vSphere Integrated Containers to Help Enterprises Embrace Digital Business
- VMware Further Simplifies Production Deployment of OpenStack Clouds with VMware Integrated OpenStack
- VMware Delivers Innovations to the Digital Workspace with Unified Endpoint Management, Windows 10 Support and Enhanced Identity Management
Key Highlights:
VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger opened VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada, this morning by telling his audience that “a new era of cloud freedom and control is here.” Gelsinger used his keynote to introduce the VMware®Cross-Cloud Architecture™. This is a game-changing new architecture that, as he says, “will enable customers to run, manage, connect, and secure applications across clouds and devices in a common operating environment.”
A Strategy for an All-Digital World
Gelsinger began his remarks by describing the progression from a world characterized by a mix of traditional and digital business operations to an all-digital world. “Today,” he said, “only 20 percent of businesses are leading this digital transformation.” “The challenge for businesses worldwide, he added, is to choose which way they intend to make their own digital transformation.”
Making the End-User Experience “Consumer Simple — Enterprise Secure”
Sanjay Poonen opened today’s general session with energy and passion, describing VMware’s digital workspace strategy and the new EUC technologies announced earlier in the day. He shared our three-layer EUC strategy, all of which comes together in the new consumer simple, enterprise secure digital workspace: apps and identity, desktop and mobile, and management and security. The keynote showcased a high caliber of customer and partner stories, including: the American Red Cross, Coca-Cola, Mecklenburg County and Sprint. In addition, Sanjay was joined on stage by Salesforce’s EVP of Product and Solutions Marketing Stephanie Buscemi, and by Tanium CEO Orion Hindi.
SDDC Innovations for the Mobile-Cloud Era
Ray O’Farrell then turned to Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) innovations for the Mobile-Cloud era, hosting Mike Wittig, Senior Director of Consumer Digital Infrastructure Services, from Nike for a discussion around how our solutions (vCloud Suite, NSX, VIO, AirWatch, Horizon) are fueling Nike’s digital products and services. Next up was Kit Colbert explaining how vSphere Integrated Containers has been expanded to provide a full container stack with deep integration into vSphere and the SDDC, enabling customers to run containers in production. He also gave an update on Photon Platform and how we’re delivering on the promise of simplifying greenfield cloud native deployments.
Showcasing the Power of NSX and Virtual SAN
Rajiv Ramaswami followed, describing his personal journey towards an increasing appreciation of the power of NSX. He called out 40+ NSX customers in Las Vegas who are showcasing how NSX has transformed their businesses and he ran compelling demos on how NSX can provision and secure apps and clouds. Yanbing Li turned the spotlight to how customers can best simplify their cloud infrastructure in a Cross-Cloud world, with a focus on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure enabling a seamless path from virtualization to VMware Cloud Foundation. The key takeaways? NSX is real and on fire with >400% customer growth in the last 18 months! This is the year of Virtual SAN, with more than 5,000 customers today and the majority of workloads powered by Virtual SAN used for mission-critical applications!