In a slight change from normal behavior this week is VMware’s European VMworld soiree, I say a slight change as this is is usually held in October. The European conference is to be fair never as good as their US offering, yes the Keynote speeches had tip of the hat to the Europeans with Gelsinger talking about GDPR, saying that no Technology can ensure a company is GDPR compliant, and that any attempt to align with the regulation requires an intimate and ongoing understanding of European Privacy laws and business policy. This is true, but on thing that GDPR does do is rationalize that law and policy across all member states so it will clear up some contradictions and anomalies. the delved a little deeper into the VMware Cloud provider program, with replaces the current VMware Cloud program. It seems that VMware have been free’d by offloading their vCloud Air division to OVH
There is a lot of noise about VMware on AWS, but to be fair this was done to the death at their US party, HCX is a new technology announced by VMware it is a partnership with two VCPP partners (IBM and OVH), I must say that this has promise, but again the jury is still out on whether it has legs or not at the base of it HCX is cross cloud mobility across versions of ESXi and that is bi-directional. This sounds a little like vMotion on steroids, with some automated machine configuration to handle IP and other necessary changes, for a overview of the technology have a read of this. It seems to be an interesting technology, but it is still not real cross cloud, as it is still only VMware to VMware, albeit a public cloud running on VMware ESXi based infrastructure. True cross cloud is Cloud agnostic. I want to be able to move from AWS to Azure to On Premises’s to GCP with no outages and a seamless experience, but it is a step in the right direction.
The is also a new Trust Mark for VMware’s Cloud Verified partners, consider it a blue twitter tick. This mark will show that the vender has a deep investment in VMware technologies and are committed to providing a key set of services and support; again as is the wont with new processes the list of verified partners is not long. It includes OVH, Centurylink, IBM, Fujitsu and RackSpace. What is interesting is that neither TrustMark or HCX includes AWS. This is quite surprising considering the noise out of Las Vegas regarding their synergistic partnership.
VMworld Europe likes it’s big brother has a tech target awards ceremony, however Europe concentrates on user projects rather than vendor products. This year there were 15 projects that made the shortlist as shown below:
Best cloud project
- Bang & Olufsen (nominated by Cogeco Peer 1)
- The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (ICSA)
- Synlab UK (nominated by Ancoris)
- NIGAY
- Synergy Logistics (nominated by Iland)
Best desktop virtualisation and mobility project
- Airbus
- Claire House Children’s Hospice
- Open Grid Europe
- EBM Papst Group
- Bolton College (nominated by Tegile Systems)
- Safeline (nominated by Navisite)
Best data security and data protection project
- Gleadell Agriculture (nominated by Zerto)
- Intesa Sanpaolo
- Bupa Dental
- Swansea University
This year the quality of the entries was so high that for the first time ever the judges awarded a highly-recommended as well as a category winner.
Best Cloud Project:
Winner: The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (ICSA)
Highly Recommended: Synlab UK (nominated by Ancoris)
Best Desktop Virtualisation and Mobility Project:
Winner: Claire House Children’s Hospice
Highly Recommended: Airbus
Best data security and data protection project
Winner: Gleadell Agriculture (nominated by Zerto)
Highly Recommended: Intesa Sanpaolo
VMware have emerged from under their cloud. The messaging at VMworld this year and to a lesser extent last year has been much more focused, we can see the direction they are travelling in. VMware on AWS, the divestiture of vCloud Air to OVH, HCX, AppDefense, VSAN and NSX are key to VMware. But their direction is now known; they are talking bullish and starting to deliver on their promises.