UG have previously been very infrastructure specific. Servers, hardware, software releases, storage, heated network debates and third party vendors touting their wares.
This one had a slight deviation into some of the new VMware initiatives. First a short, but nice presentation on vFabric and vApp. Both things I'm interested in due to my employer recently jumping on the VMware/Spring stack. tcServer, Gemfire and even big brother EMC rolled in with a couple of Greenplum racks.
The second break from tradition was a slot given over to Neil Mills (@MillsHill_Neil) of Mills Hill Recruiting.
The pre-amble by Simon Gallagher (@vinf_net) very much set the tone on how the traditional VMware geek needed to, or should start to become way more holistic in their approach to technology and solutions.
Neil followed this up with his presentation setting the vision for the 'Cloud Angel' and the next 5 years.
Cloud Angel: Someone who's no longer constrained by the silos of technology, someone who's adept with the cloud harp and can transfix the business with their melodic musings of an automated data centre with apps and services flowing from the fingers of devs out to consumers with no more than a man and a dog.
Being a VMUG it was a VMware centric presentation, VCP will be/already is expected, push your VMware and storage, VMware and security, VMware and <insert technology>, you get the idea. On the journey home this poked a few brain cells.
Together the two presentations got me wondering about the future and how much of an angels tool box will contain the VMware we know today, 5 years is a long time. Can they continue to be this dominant? I think something missed, maybe for controversial reasons, is to consider some of the alternatives.
VMware acquisitions are taking them up into the app layers while the new kids on the block are starting to get rowdy, OpenStack, Piston, Eucalyptus, AWS etc. The trend is also towards infrastructure as a commodity, vBlock, Flexpod, wheel it in and wheel it out, bursting into public clouds, moving into public clouds.
Its the new things that will keep them in this market, I guess that's an obvious statement! But will it also become the direction at the expense of the more traditional. vApp is a great example that just happens to run on vSphere, but does it have to?! I wonder if theres a secret lab where virtual pixies are plugging the next generation of solutions into other API's and one day we'll might even see vSphere being given away.
VMware were undoubtedly a game changer in this industry but we're starting to see the next evolution. It will be interesting to see how they, and the Angels adapt.
I hope they do, I already buried Netware and that was traumatic enough.
