The week that all of us virtualization junkies have been waiting for has finally arrived. In case you are not sure what I am talking about, it is VMworld 2010 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. The weather, for me, is a little cool with the wind. But then again, I am from Florida so it does not take much for me to think it is cool. The sun is shining and the place is packed. All and all a great start for this event.
The event got started on Sunday night at the VMunderground WuPaaS VMworld warm up party at the Thirsty Bear, next to the Moscone Center. It was great to see the people that share the passion for virtualization that I do and this party really got the week started right.
The VMworld event officially started on Monday and the last I heard there were somewhere around 15,000 people in attendance this year. A personal bummer for me this year was the absence of a lot of my European bloggers and friends that were not able to attend. Hang in there guys and I look forward to seeing you all again in the future.
Some things are different and better at this year’s event. The main conference is happening at the Moscone north and south wings and the labs have been moved completely over to Moscone west. With this change the event does not seem quite as crowded with people spread out throughout the center. I am happy to report that this year we have hot food as an option along with the cold box lunches. Looks like VMware has been paying attention to all the comments about the food at the last few events and really put forth an effort to change that this year.
There is a lot of talk about the Intel acquisition of McAfee as well as the tug of war between Dell and HP for the acquisition of 3par. Along the same lines Quest software has announced a strategic alliance with Liquidware Labs to license its Stratusphere Fit and UX products. It will be interesting to see and hear about the other mergers and/or acquisitions that are in the works, to see how different companies are positioning themselves for the future.
The solution exchange has not been opened yet, so I do not have any comments about the different vendor booths and any new software demos but I have seen some new names as sponsors of different events. It will be interesting to see what the newcomers are about and what their products have to offer and bring to the table.
So all in all, the start of VMworld 2010 has been very positive and I look forward to the rest of this exciting week. A little reminder for those of you that are at the event, some of my books that I have been a part of as an author or contributing author are available again this year at the VMworld Book Store. Check them out when you get time and also check out some of the other virtualization authors that have books for sale and that are also attending the event. Some of the names that you might recognize that are present would be: Edward Haletky, Jase, McCarty, Eric Seibert, and Scott Lowe, just to name a few. If you purchase any books this year at VMworld you do not have to worry about carrying the books back on the plane because the VMworld book store will ship the books to you at a cost of three dollars. You can’t beat that!
If you are at the event, the Social Media and Blogger lounge is home base for a lot of us here at the event. Stop by and say hello.