My day started with the usual walk from my airbnb apartment to Moscone, happily I ended up joining @vcdx133 at Denny’s for a decent breakfast to help start the day. I’m also happy to report that my legs seem to have adjusted to the extra walking and have infact embraced their additional usage (unlike my voice) and surprisingly they actually feel better than earlier this week 🙂

This morning Sanjay Poonen opened the general session which started with in interested take on how the smartphone is the remote control of your life.

• Consumer Simplicity meets Enterprise Security
• Any Application – Any Device = VMware Workspace Suite
• Virtualised Infrastructure with Hybrid Cloud = SDDC.

  

I was surprised to find a nervous Microsoft representative onstage talking about Windows 10 with over 6 million migrations completed. Microsoft then went on to mention their integration with vCloud Air.VMware demo’d the use of a Windows 10 Work ‘profile’ providing integration from BYOD to VMware via Airwatch, all integrated into Windows 10.

VMware then demo’d SCCM being used to export applications via Airwatch into App Volumes (Project Asquared) ready for use on both Virtual AND Physical desktops… And it get’s better, this same seamless integration has also been done for Samsung on Android and also Apple IOS.Next we saw a demo of NVIDIA 3D vGPU with a legacy CAD/CAM application running on a Windows Surface device.

Real time control of network security access via NSX was the topic of the next demo, policy being used to control access to internal business data based on device location (internal VPN access vs Public Internet access) powerful stuff!

Martin Casado came on stage next and started off talking about how the Application has changed. The Application has become the network, a distributed system that underpins the problems in IT today.

He mentioned the NSX 6.2 announcement earlier last week and then went on to demo the deployment of a 3 tier application with security policies/distributed load balancer and then used vRealize Operations to provide visibility when troubleshooting a failure.

Security integration into NSX was mentioned, providing Distributed Network Encryption and Data a Rest Encryption within the VMDK.

Pat Gelsinger was the final presenter of today’s general session and showed some great perspective on the benefits of internet connectivity through the world and its positive effect on global education and ultimately the global economy.

In 2015 we typically own 2.9 connected devices per person, moving to 5.9 by 2020:

Number of objects orbiting the earth (there are lots):

Startups embracing new models and attacking the incumbents (yay!):

Pat provided some great industry analogies comparing Cloud adoption to automotive industry changes with the introduction of uber and driverless cars etc, He then went into providing parallels to Cloud adoption and implementation of Public/Private clouds. Talking about SaaS, PaaS, IaaS…

Pat then went on to discuss the impact of Edward Snowden on IT security and the ongoing need for Private Cloud driven by requirements for data sovereignty. He also mentioned VMware’s ability to do cross-cloud vMotion.

The Journey to Open Source:

Architecture for Security:

Security needs to be Architected in, not ‘built in’ or ‘bolted on’.

The session finished with a look forward to new technologies with AI after a failed start in 1991, AI will move us from reactive to proactive technology. What we believe to be creepy or invasive technology today will become acceptable and invaluable technology for the next generation.

After the general session I discovered @bluebottleroast with the help of @cody_bunch, @dmanconi and @sturadnidge.

It was then time for more Solutions Exchange via the Pure Storage Booth, I’m looking forward to spending some time looking at a couple of the startups on Wednesday, I’ll keep you posted on anything I find interesting…

I then met up with @rayheffer who I’d spoken to via twitter, as usual it was great to put a name to a twitter handle and meet Ray in person over my favourite topic… Coffee.

I headed back over to the hang space to spend some time with the bloggers before my 2nd #vBrownBag #techtalks at 2:30pm – Build Your Own User Group – BYOUG 17 tips.

I then met up with @nickmarshall9 and had a great discussion about the recently announced VMware Validated Designs, I think these are a great idea by VMware and will provide a predictable outcome for customers regardless of if they build there own or use converged/Hyperconverged infrastructure. I’m looking forward to seeing more from this.

This year part of the Hang Space has been dedicated to the DevOps movement and we had the chance to attend a session by the @herrod talking about DevOps from a VC perspective, this was really something, Stephen is a fantasic public speaker and during the session he candidly shared his experience of where DevOps works, what impact it can have on an organisation and what he looks for when investing in this industry.

It was then time to head over to the VMUG Lounge to volunteer my time in assisting attendees understand the value of the user group and talk with other VMUG leaders about their challenges and experiences. I bumped into @frankdenneman which was great as I then got the chance to ask if he’d be available to attend the Melbourne VMUG UserCon in early 2016, let’s see if we can get Frank along?

I Rounded off the official activities with attending my first session of the event #SDDC5113 Everything you need to know about VMware Integrated OpenStack 2.0, I’ll provide a separate post on the content.

Evening Entertainment

I started of with heading over to the VMware Office of the CTO Party, where I bumped into @cormacjhogan @mreferre and my friend @sunny_dua who I’m looking forward to catching up with in Singapore in the near future…

It was then onto the vExpert Reception where we had an audience with @pgelsinger, it was great to catchup with vExperts and talk about the VMworld announcements, I met @simonlong_ (who fairly recently moved to CA) along with @timgleed and @cxi.

I closed the night out with a visit to the VMware Software Defined Storage party, which had live music and was absolutely thumping.

I decided to pass on Veeam and vBacon and call it a day. I headed back to the airbnb apartment, again another great VMworld day comes to a close!