 Hi, I'm John Troyer. I'm here live at VMworld 2010. It's Thursday, last day of the conference I think this is the last session we'll be filming. I really appreciate you if you've been watching We've been having a good time here. We're here in the bloggers lounge. Everybody is Looking a little might relaxed and very full of conference today. My name is John Troyer. I work on the social media team We're here every week with the community's podcast every Wednesday at noon California time So check us out. We couldn't do that this week So we thought we'd bring together a few of the V experts for a final perspective on the conference V experts are the V expert program is our advocacy and evangelism program here at VMware We've we've designated 300 people as some of the best evangelist knowledgeable folks that go above and beyond beyond their day jobs to blog to write books to lead Vmugs to really Spread the spread their knowledge to the two other folks. It's really valuable what you guys do So thank you very much for everything you do So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and a little bit about you? Hey, I'm Stuart Radney to run the V internals calm blog based out of the UK working for a global investment bank My name is Mike Laverick. I run the RTFM education website Run wrote a couple of books about VMware and I have a regular kind of podcast with people from the virtualization community including Steve last time and I'm Justin Emerson I work for a VMware partner and I run the a VM junkie blog Great. Thanks. So I thought this was a good VM world. I thought there's an excellent VM world What did you guys think in general? Yeah, I think I think for me the biggest. This is my first VM world US and first time San Francisco a beautiful city and But I think the real value for people like myself and Mike based out of the UK is Actually getting a chance to meet people face-to-face, you know have have conversations with product managers and engineers that we would never get an opportunity to do otherwise that and and the other thing I think is really good is just the you know conglomeration of vendors on the on the solutions exchange You know, you never really get any other opportunities to have such a concentration of so many different vendors where you can go around and Have them show you their stuff in a short space of time. So yeah, hmm. Yeah, I mean I would second that too I think there was a bit of anxiety. I think this year about With the Copenhagen event being so close to this event And I think that's probably could bid some people in Mia that they'll attend the Copenhagen event but not come here But I mean personally I find VM world is the one time in a year where I can actually meet with my US Chums who you're in constant contact through, you know, Twitter or Facebook or maybe you're doing an interview or podcast But just meeting people physically that you can't get away from the value of that still Mm-hmm. I mean, I must admit this is my eighth VM world both if you count the you you ones and the US ones and I think in the last couple of years I've really stopped doing the breakout sessions, which is I kind of miss but it's it's the people you bump into and me So at the CTO party, I managed to call us Scott Davis the PM for View and talk about a book I'm writing on VMware view and do that kind of thing I just wouldn't be able to do that if I wasn't here So being here is really really important and you're and you're you're building a relationship with people It's a Mike and I saw you last year in the year before you before if you miss one It's like where's where's Mike gone? Where's to you gone? So it really was important this year, but any other really to make sure I was here. I think mm-hmm Justin, how'd you think what it's the most virtual time of the year? It's I mean I I love it so much I've been this is I think my fifth And what's interesting for me is I've been here both as a customer and then now as a partner And the the the conference provides really different things for different types of people Personally now both as a partner and as somebody active in the community. I mean Mike you hit on the head It's really about the people You know I I could come here and go to the breakout sessions and I still do and some of them are really interesting But a lot of my time has now spent meeting people checking out new new technologies new partners And meeting with you know some of the people internally at VMware that you know Unless you're you're living in Palo Alto all the time You really don't get to see so I think it's it's great It's probably the most valuable conference that I go to every year All right, well one of the one of the new areas we talked a lot about cloud here at the show The fabric we hit on a little bit Application frameworks for the cloud, but end user computing was also one of the the main topics that we talked about And we released view 4.5. We previewed some things Justin What did you think about end user computing here at the show? Well end user computing is kind of in personally one of my focuses for a long time free my blog I post a lot about virtual desktop stuff, and I think that you know part of the whole name change to end user computing It really shows a shift in the focus and the thinking because we used to be talk about desktop exactly But it's not about the desktop anymore. You know what what's a virtual desktop, right? There's you know a desktop's a location It's not a thing if you think about it So I think it's a it's a really interesting step seeing a lot of the project horizon stuff is really really exciting Where it really becomes application explain what project horizon once so project horizon is a kind of a new way of doing application Delivery that helps to merge together Software as a service as well as traditional Windows applications Other types of web applications things like that and puts them in a in a way to provision and deploy applications to a user No matter what device they're from so if they're from an iPad or if they're from their desktop things like that It's really really interesting stuff and the in the demo that they did on Tuesday was really impressive And are you currently working with four points you view for four part? Yes, so I actually got to play around with the beta of you four point five It's really exciting. I know a lot of people were Frustrated that it got delayed and things like that But you know talking to some of the people you know They said that look the reason why it was pushed out is because we wanted to make sure that this release was solid and Talking to a lot of the product managers They said you know we're the most proud of this release Than any of the previous view releases that we've done and it really shows from the code and you know when you tell customers that you know They they pushed it off a little bit in order to make it really really good Usually they're okay with that so I think that's a really positive message VMware has a tradition of Under-promising and over delivering and I hope that we continue that yeah Yeah, it's better to do it that way than the other way around so Mike You're actually working on a view four point five book and so you were also in the beta So what did you think of the show in general and view in particular? Yeah, I've been involved in the beta for I guess it must be nearly six months now And I would I would concur with what you just said I think previous releases of VMWare view and VDM as it was I didn't feel that there was a level of complexity and sophisticatedness if that's a word it is now that kind of warranted my kind of involvement in the product from a kind of Writing one of my RTFM guides, but looking at the the distribution in beta and then the release candidates it Felt for me like a tipping point of being released where I felt It's now time for me to write about this in such a way that wouldn't be patronizing to somebody You know next next next kind of thing and I'm the view product hasn't lost any of its simplicity or ease of deployment In exchange for that level of great complexity and flexibility and that's actually quite a difficult thing To achieve anybody that's ever created software that's tried to be both simple and powerful knows that yeah But for me the big thing wasn't I was surprised how little fanfare there was around view and maybe that was because of the kind of Little rocky water that it's been through So what I'm really excited about is the v-clown director technology Because that's been such a super secret beta programmer I don't know anyone except like the top men providers like Verizon others who are in Redwood So it's been on the agenda for everybody for I would say nearly a year But very few of us have actually been able to actually use it and touch it So I'm looking forward to finishing the view thing and get my hands on the clown director thing as soon as I can because I think For somebody like I see myself as a kind of mature virtualization person and I'm sure stew you guys feel the same way It's not new to us this technology and we're looking to like push things to another level, you know Great great. Well, that does bring us to cloud stew your cloud guy. You built your own private cloud You know, you've been working on it. I mean cloud is really not a technology. It's an operational stance It's a it's a lot of things and I don't want to get into what is cloud It's a paradigm. I want to get the video. That's a pizza I want to get the video that we started off the keynote with because I thought that was brilliant Even though we've already been over what is cloud a lot of it cloud is like a pizza that you order But stew what do you think of it or what just talk about cloud in general? Yeah I mean, I think the best description of cloud. I've ever heard was that it's a It's a bit like security. It's not a binary state. It's a continuum. It's a journey if you will And so in that respect, yeah, it was really, you know, really really glad to see the cloud director finally Finally make it out there a couple of months ago. I was invited to come over here as part of the beta program But unfortunately, I couldn't make it and You know, I think I think the really important thing around V-Cloud director is the partnership that VMware is Engaging with with these external cloud providers And this is something I would strongly recommend anyone who works for a large enterprise like I do To to do the same thing get out there and talk to the partners because When you're when you're developing an internal cloud or a private cloud or whatever you want to call it It it is pretty important to make sure that it looks You know, it doesn't look too different from an external cloud because you're just going to help yourself in terms of you know Work-laid portability and interoperability and that kind of stuff. So really looking forward to getting my hands dirty I did the lab the labs for V-Cloud director and labs team. I Won't swear but unbelievably awesome job. That that is just mind-blowing stuff. I set up Can I just add to that? I think I don't know whether this is sort of gone under the radar But I think VMware's alignment with Verizon is is huge. I was really really huge to have a mainstream People out on the street recognize this as a brand Partner I think that's really really big and I was surprised out. There wasn't more kind of a Verizon are involved, you know, I think that's one of the the things that slipped in there There was a lot of news we're so used to being a product company But this V-Cloud data center services that we just launched with these major partners I think is you know, that'll take a while for people to sink in because this is really the folk the industrial strength This is not your your this is not your little booksellers. I'm this is not the Amazon cloud This is industrial strength cloud. Yeah, I mean what I would say about Verizon in particular is one of the most common Analogies for the cloud is it should be regarded like the telephone service. You pick up the telephone the call gets made You don't have to worry about all the interconnects and I said to somebody well It's kind of blowed back the other way now. We have a major comms provider It's going to provide us with a virtualization environment So maybe they are the best guys to do it because they kind of already doing that for for comms infrastructure I mean, that's a very throwaway kind of thing to say But you know the analogy is being there and I think it's what they certainly understand SLA's You know they're about five nights and I thought you know, there were two there are two things one I think it was really interesting how the keynote on Tuesday had so much content in it And yet it was all really subdued like you know VMware announced that they made two acquisitions and that was completed with up and by the way We've also acquired this company tricypher. Okay, now. Let's go back. You know It was like no no pomp and circumstance. No fanfare. It was very matter of fact Like this is why we're doing this. This is the direction that we're going and and to add to that You know, I think it was really cool to see that VMware's whole vCloud or just cloud strategy covers a lot of the different stratum of Cloud types you've not only got the strategy around vCloud director Which in of itself is a huge step forward which is targeting kind of the infrastructure as a service But you have the announcements around vFabric and around platform as a service one of the biggest announcements I think was that they are collaborating with Google to make those compatible in the Google Cloud with their stuff. That's really really important and that drives home the message of portability The VMware's been trying to evangelize and then also playing in software as a service with Zimbra and other pieces like that So it's really clear that VMware doesn't just see the cloud as one type of service You know as as you said, it's an operational model and whether that model is at a software layer at a platform layer or at an infrastructure layer They've got a clear strategy laid out for that. Yeah, I mean, I remember last week I did a podcast with some of the guys from tech target and they're asking me You know, what what did I expect to see out of the n-world? I thought that's pretty much bubbling but before we drink the cool air too much I think we all agree that the cloud isn't delivered as a 1.0 product on Tuesday of next week It's I've often thought this project for the cloud is is like the journey to the moon It's a long-term venture and maybe we're in Geostationary orbit right now or doing the first exploratory loops around the moon in preparation for landing to it And it's a multidisciplinary process which doesn't just involve VMware it involves Partners and providers, but other platforms as well So, I mean, I've got user groups in the UK a lot and a lot of people will say to me Oh, well, I want to hit this seriously until there's a 2.0 Product and I'm like you haven't really understood what it is this thing is about because it's not going to be delivered in a single instance shrink wrap package for every single business anyway Two last things you mentioned that we mentioned the keynote two last things we've already mentioned Let's let's cover it slightly real quick. And then I think we're about done You mentioned the keynote. I thought the keynote was excellent this year. It's definitely worth 90 minutes of your time to watch It was well put together. It's a story Some people thought the Paul section was kind of slow. I thought listen to what that man saying he it's a very it's a complicated story But it's it's it's a it's there's some deep wisdom there I thought and I thought the really amazing thing was especially following along because you know We're all sitting there on our on Twitter and on our blogs while while he's doing his keynote and I'm list what I'm You know hearing all everyone else's reactions And I thought a really interesting reaction was from the Brian Madden guys where they were saying that you know Paul just forecasted the death of the traditional windows application and the and the death of windows as a as a key You know part of the stack right because what he was saying was that the operating system as it existed up until this point Has kind of become irrelevant because what was it supposed to do? It's supposed to provide API's to applications and manage the underlying hardware and now it really does neither of those because you have frameworks on The top and you have virtualization on the bottom and that's why that part of the keynote to me was really really impressive from a from a strategy perspective because it was like That's that's a really powerful claim to be making while at the same time trying to be he did not claim now just to be clear I also saw some tweets from some from from some skeptics that were saying oh, they said that operating systems are going away Well, what's gonna be running on all those VMs. He did not say that at all No, he just said that the innovation is happening elsewhere I mean you just I mean we've known that for ten years how much time more time do you spend on your browser than do you spend on a Windows app, I mean that's just This was going to happen with or without VMware like that It's that it's that it was a this is a this is a shift and Momentum is going that direction and no one particular company is going to I mean you may be able to you know Push the asteroid a little bit out of changes trajectory, but you're not going to stop it from from hitting its target It's going in that direction. I mean I'd like to say that I actually enjoyed the general session that we had this morning about innovation It was such a relief to have something that wasn't cloud cloud cloud virtualization But it was you know stuff that really doesn't really directly relate to what VMware does but it was really entertaining and It was really an eye-opener on some of the kind of crazy stuff that could come through So that was like I actually joined it because it was kind of a light Relief to the it was good good Thursday morning Especially for a few beers the night Hey, one one last thing real quick. We talked about the labs labs were big news at this show Did you all go good? Did you guys all take advantage of the labs? Yeah, I did definitely so get summarized real quick. What was I mean? We had we had the lab guys on here a little earlier We did something like 125,000 VMs were created and destroyed Did all the labs? I think the last last thing Duncan said was that they've done 13,000 12,000 12 and a half which compared to last year when you were trying to you might have gotten reserved for two labs in an instructor base You know in the instructor base part they meet their their number of labs done at VM world last year They met that in a day and a half. Yeah, that's amazing. But this was this was an impressive thing I mean you want to talk about yeah, I mean everything from You know, we were fortunate that you could organize the Attura given by the architects of the lab infrastructure on Sunday before the conference began and And just amazing in terms of the you know the the software that was developed to profile What labs people were doing so that they could then you know sort of pre provision labs in accordance with what the demand profile looked like And I mean the infrastructure itself just incredibly resilient Yeah, you had you on odd site data center here one in what Miami one in one in Miami one in Virginia Yeah, so I mean the infrastructure was and the same data center is going to be used for Copenhagen Yeah, so I mean yeah the infrastructure and and and the ability to completely isolate anyone and have the other two running It was I mean I work for a bank. It looked like the kind of stuff I deal with and Yeah, it was a real cloud a real point. Definitely. Great. I'd like to thank you guys for being here today. It's Thursday It's all time to go home. I think we've all learned a lot. I'm ready to go home and take a break I'm John Troyer. I will be here next Wednesday on the pod community podcast. We're there there every week rain or shine Or cloudy or cloudy exactly. I'm feeling pretty cloudy these days So I would like to thank my guests stew and Mike and Justin all the experts But you'll see us, you know come around blogs dot VMware.com or you know, we're all over the place So thanks. Thank you John. Thanks a lot