Early-Bird pricing for the annual VMware VMworld events ends June 12th (for the US event) and June 20th (for the European event). That means there’s only a month to go before the price goes up to the regular rate.
The event is (as always) shaping up to be great, and whilst details are still under development I’m expecting the following to feature at the event.
vSphere on AWS. This was announced last year (just in time for the VMworld Europe keynote) with release lined up for mid-2017. I’m expecting to see a launch, lots of publicity, and a few customer stories from those who have been trying it out already. I think there will also be a continuing push on VMware products on other clouds- the recent Horizon on Azure announcement and the VMware/Google Partnership as just two examples.
vSAN. Version 6.6 was released in April this year and based on the normal release tempo and comments and discussions on podcasts and in community meetings I’m expecting the next version to be announced at VMworld, possibly with a GA date just afterwards. What will the new version bring? At this moment I’m not too sure but I’m expecting continuing developments around the data encryption introduced in 6.6.
Dell. The Dell takeover was announced at the start of VMworld Europe 2015 and was
finalised September last year. Whilst there have been some worries about the acquisition of VMware adversely affecting it’s independence and the flourishing ecosystem –many of whom are Dell’s competitors – don’t forget that VMware was owned by EMC before this and this didn’t seem to affect other storage vendors interaction. The whole company, from Michael Dell and Pat Gelsinger down have from the outset said that VMware would keep that independence, and I’m happy to believe that. I’m expecting the Dell-EMC presence to be as strong as ever but I’m also expecting the other vendors to continue on.
On the Dell EMC front, at DellEMC World they recently announced VDI Complete Solutions- a hyperconverged platform running vSphere/Horizon sold on an Op-Ex friendly subscription model. This has got quite a few people excited and I’m expecting to hear more on this front. I also wouldn’t be surprised if other hardware vendors made a similar offering.
Early-Bird discounts end in June for both the US and European events, so what are you waiting for?
