Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

I take back what I said earlier about lack of technical track & content – whilst it wasn’t quite up to the list of previously announced sessions there was enough good stuff with information that is relevant to VMware partners with both a technical & competitive slant.

I still have my concerns that tomorrow is going to be rammed with the number of people expected, best get in early if you want a seat.

There was a fair bit of mud-slinging at Microsoft & Citrix from the ThinApp and View camp but I’ve seen similar from the other side so I think that’s just business as usual, whilst a nice thought – it would be better to have more of an independent view on the matter and I note Brian Madden has a session about VDI vs.TS and he’s always been pretty objective about that sort of thing  – I’ve seen him at BriForum in the past.

Afternoon sessions were interesting, covering the upcoming AppSpeed product (‘#include <subject to change, your mileage may vary type disclaimers.h>), which is borne from the B-Hive acquisition last year – I’ve been looking forward to this as a result of early demo work I did on the B-Hive product, the upcoming vCenter integrated product is likley to support a good set of DB & Web applications as well as Exchange – I for one would like to add my vote for RDP/ICA coverage in future releases, VMware have noted this is in the pipeline for future releases, there will be a further beta programme later in the year and it looks very promising – almost a killer app for virtualization projects as far as I can tell (more information later in the week from the public sessions).

Microsoft were hosting some drinks this evening and had some interesting discussions with the AppV/HyperV guys, they have a stand in the solutions exchange and are worth checking out, IMHO if only for the AppV stuff,  it’s an excellent product and IMHO better positioned for the enterprise environment and can service offline scenarios much better than VMware ThinApp (despite the mud-slinging that went on today)

I spent a bit of time preparing the ioko stand in the vCloud pavilion, I’ll be on the stand tomorrow during the lunch break and the evening session with TechHead. Confusingly, and some would say tactically we are both called Simon in real life but if it helps, I look like this. Don’t let that put you off – or the fact that there seems to be some concrete attached to my head in the photo ! :)). 

We’ll be there with some other ioko colleagues for the welcome drinks, please feel free to come over and say hi, we have a presentation on the stand around our cloud reference architecture and customers. I would be happy to talk anyone through it and our practical experiences implementing this cloud thing (we were doing it long before it was called “cloud”).

The solutions exchange is huge.. far bigger than I had expected, drop by the Dell stand for the biggest flat-screen TV you have ever seen!

Hands-on labs are looking good – dual screen setups and thin-client devices.

Here are some pictures from the Solutions Exchange as it’s being setup

Right, early start tomorrow (or later today, it’s 1am local time)… more live posts from the keynote – here’s hoping for some major product announcements from VMware to counter the recent MS/Citrix ones.