Disclaimer: I recently attended VMworld 2016 – US.  My flights were paid for by myself, VMware provided me with a free pass to the conference and various bits of swag, and Tech Field Day picked up my hotel costs. There is no requirement for me to blog about any of the content presented and I am not compensated in any way for my time at the event.  Some materials presented were discussed under NDA and don’t form part of my blog posts, but could influence future discussions.

Here’re the notes from the VMworld 2016 – General Session – Monday. And if you want some blurry photos as well – I’ve got you covered.
“How will tomorrow arrive?”
Pat Gelsinger (CEO VMware) took the stage.

23000 attendees? Facing forward – with you to the future

21 ppl have attended every VMworld – lifetime passes for them and spouses

“digital transformation”. Digital vs traditional business. All business is digital business – there’s no longer a distinction. So what’s the difference between leaders? Culture and tech strategy.

2006 – What happened?

Pluto lost it’s status as a planet, and Eric Schmidt walked on stage and talked about stuff being “in a cloud somewhere”.

By the numbers:

• 2006 – 29 million workloads – 98% traditional IT, 2% (mainly salesforce.com)
• 2011 – 80 million workloads – 7% public cloud, 6% private cloud
• 2016 – 160 m workloads, 15% public cloud, 12% private, 73% traditional
• 2021 – Predict that 50% in the cloud

“let’s click a little bit more into that” – I’m really not a fan of that phrase.

2030 – public cloud becomes more than 50% of workloads. “we have much work to do”

Hosting in 2016 is a $60 billion market, with an 18% growth rate. There’s a big shift from DIY to service provider DCs. Device proliferation, however, is unevenly distributed.

• IoT is “about to explode” – 4.5x devices over the next 5 years to 18 million devices
• 2019 – more machine driven than human driven devices connected to the internet

As cloud takes root IT becomes more cost effective and more accessible

Which vertical has embraced cloud most aggressively? Counting down from 10 – 1.

• Construction;
• Professional Services;
• Securities and investments;
• Insurance;
• Transportation;
• Manufacturing;
• Banking;
• Resources;
• Communications;
• Technology vendors (1)

Every function in every industry is embracing cloud – now calling it “self-starting IT”.

Gel singer states that traditional systems of IT are doomed to fail. It’s a period of traumatic change – freedom and control.

VMware spoke about the software-defined DC (announced in 2011), with NSX and VSAN in the tornado phase of adoption. We then saw some Customer Videos from Zebra Technologies, iGov, SAIC.

Gel singer then spoke about vCloud Air Service and vCloud Air Network, and the introduction of vCloud Air Hybrid Cloud Manager. Clearly there was a need for a Cross Cloud Architecture. This was described as “Like having a teenager you love and like”. This is an analogy VMware needs to stop using.

The idea behind VMware Cloud Foundation and Cross-Cloud Services is to make the private cloud easy.

Gelsinger also announced VMware Cloud Foundation as a service, with IBM being the first partner on board.

Robert Leblanc – SVP Cloud at IBM joins Gelsinger on stage.

• higher quality, lower cost, less time, more secure, at a global scale
• 500+ customers on the platform (including Telstra)

Alan Rosa, SVP tech delivery and IT security at Marriott, also joins them on stage.

Some handy Cloud Foundation and Cross-cloud Services articles can be found here:

• VMworld 2016: VMware pushes hybrid cloud and SDDC with new Cross-Cloud Architecture
• What VMware Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud Means For Companies Globally
• VMworld Day 1: VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture Enables Organizations to Thrive in the Cloud Era

Guido Appenzeller (@appenz) then takes the stage.

What does it mean to be in IT in the age of “Mega clouds”?

Motti Finkelstein from Citibank talks about the need to ramp resources and ramp them down when the need arises.

• complexity?
• Your apps need to be architected for bursting, need APIs, need to be able to do this across multiple platforms
• you have to be able to bifurcate the workloads to the various providers
• security and compliance?

John Spiegel from Columbia Sportswear comes on stage.

NSX for public cloud workloads

Josh Warsop – Johnson and Johnson

• “Borderless data centre”
• Leverage your existing skills to get your infra into the public cloud

Jim Fowler, CIO, GE (Video)

Pat Gelsinger back on stage

• Manage and secure apps across public and private clouds
• Any cloud, any application, any device

Michael Dell takes the stage

Thoughts on the ecosystem changing moving forward?

“The open ecosystem of VMware is critical to its success”

“A big priority for us is making private clouds easy”

Not a bad session. 3.5 stars.