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The US edition of VMworld 2018 is finally over and maybe you want to know what’s new (or if there are something news compared to previous year). Last news from the event is where will be next year: back again to San Francisco.

Good news for somebody (me included, considering that I found Vegas too boring if you already have visited it 2-3 times), bad news for others… Anyway a change.

And what’s happened during VMworld US 2018?

Both general sessions are available on demand and they mix high-level contents (targeted for C-level) with some announces and demos.

Monday General Session: Technology Superpowers

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, VMware CTO Ray O’Farrell, and their featured guests share how to push past the boundaries of what’s possible.

Tuesday General Session: Pioneers of the Possible

Sanjay Poonen, COO, VMware Customer Operations, find out firsthand how several customers bravely took the digital transformation path and prepared their organizations for the future.

I’ve already covered some announces, like:

But there are also other news in the cloud-related services, like for example:

  • VMware Cloud Foundation 3.0 further enables delivery of a fully-integrated hybrid-cloud platform. New features include: support for any network switch and new vSAN ReadyNodes, new multi-cluster workload domains, infrastructure hybridity, and workload mobility-at-scale with NSX Hybrid Connect.
  • VMware Cloud on AWS continues global expansion with availability in the AWS Asia Pacific (Sydney) region and introduces new capabilities to accelerate cloud migration at any scale.
  • New cloud automation services (Cloud Assembly, Service Broker, and Code Stream) streamline multi-cloud infrastructure and application delivery, enhance visibility and cross-functional collaboration and provide continuous delivery and release automation.
  • Wavefront by VMware provides application operations capabilities that enable developers to troubleshoot and optimize the performance of highly-distributed, microservice-based cloud applications in real-time.

Cloud management and cloud services were a hot topic of this VMworld, with also the announcement that  VMware wants to acquire CloudHealth Technologies, a Global Platform for Multi-Cloud Operations. Maybe they realize or they are thinking about a better cloud management suite?

But maybe the most interesting is the VMware previews technology innovations with some demonstrations during the keynotes, like:

  • RDS on VMware: VMware and AWS demonstrated how Amazon Web Service’s RDS service will run on VMware in a private data center, thus offering developers a familiar RDS Functionality available on VMware in a private data center or at the Edge.
  • Project Dimension: A VMware technology preview that will extend VMware Cloud to the data center, branch offices and the edge. Project Dimension will combine VMware Cloud Foundation, in a hyper-converged form factor, with VMware Cloud managed service to deliver an SDDC infrastructure as an end-to-end service, operated by VMware. Project Dimension will dramatically simplify operational complexity and cost and offers built-in security and isolation, allowing customers to focus on innovating and differentiating their businesses.
  • Project Magna: Project Magna will make possible a self-driving data center based on machine learning. It is focused on applying reinforcement learning to a data center environment to drive greater performance and efficiencies. The demonstration illustrated how Project Magna can learn and understand application behavior to the point that it can model, test, and then reconfigure the network to a make it more optimal to improve performance. Project Magna relies on artificial intelligence algorithms to help connect the dots across huge data sets and gain deep insights across applications and the stack from application code, to software to hardware infrastructure, to the public cloud and the edge.
  • Project Concord: VMware demonstrated a highly scalable, energy-efficient decentralized trust infrastructure for digital consensus and smart contract execution. Project Concord may be used to power distributed trust infrastructures, including blockchains. As a leader in enterprise-grade distributed management and security products, VMware is poised to help enterprises harness blockchain technology in a dramatically efficient manner to advance their business goals. Project Concord is available immediately as an open source project.
  • Virtualization on 64-bit ARM: VMware demonstrated ESXi on 64-bit ARM running on a windmill farm at the Edge. Interesting case, that I discussed in a dedicated blog post.

So is VMworld is still valuable? During the last years, I hear from several people that the huge VMworld event is becoming less attractive. But the event is still followed by a lot of attendees and still has one of the biggest ecosystems with a lot of partners and exhibitors.

Is still driving the future? There are some interesting points but sometimes it’s also important to make the innovations possible and real… and to do this you need good solutions and products. And bring back some of the core products on stage seems to be an interesting move in those last VMworld events.

And there was also an important celebration: 20 years of VMware!

See also:

I’ve not attended this event in Vegas, but I plan to attend at the VMworld 2018 at Barcellona. Considering that now there will be some months of different maybe we can have some other news. Or at least have the GA versions of some announced products.

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Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.