With VMworld rapidly approaching I’ve been wondering what to expect from this year’s shows in San Francisco and Barcelona. My first thought was ‘not much new’ based on the fact that vSphere5 was released at last years show and products such as vCOPs and vCloud Director have already had major updates recently. Upon reflection however I’ve realised that this year will be no different – trying to keep up with all the announcements, new technology, product launches and social gatherings will be nearly impossible. First let’s have a quick recap of the last two year’s shows and the various releases;
History of VMworld announcements
- 2010 – Virtual Roads, Actual Clouds (attendance: 22000)
US – vCloud Director, vFabric, vShield, vSphere 4.1 (announced just before the show), Project Horizon previewed
Europe – vCloud Request Mgr, vCenter CapacityIQ
- 2011 – It’s your cloud, own it! (attendance: 25,000+)
US – Updated ‘cloud suite’ (vSphere5, view5, SRM 5, vCD 1.5, vShield 5) announced weeks before the show, vFabric Data Director, Project Octopus, Appblast, Horizon Application Manager, VXLAN
Europe – vCenter Operations Management suite, vCenter vFabric Application Management Suite, vCenter Protect Essentials Plus
Clearly the major launches are always at the flagship show in the US, with a few kept over to keep Europe happy.
What’s in store for 2012?
VMworld is always a mix of corporate strategy and ‘in the trenches’ technology deep dives. There’s always a long term, cohesive, persuasive story which brings all the disparate technology elements together in a compelling vision. Lots of column inches have been dedicated to the recent management reshuffle at VMware and EMC combined with commentary about the evolution