Brad Tompkins VMware Explore 2022
Transcript
>> Welcome to VMware Explorer 2022 with the CTO advisor studio. Come on in and consume some content. >> Welcome back to the CTO advisor studio coverage of VMware Explorer 2022. I've said the whole week, this is where the conversation around enterprise IT infrastructure, the developments and cloud and cloud capability happens from a conference perspective. Regardless of the messaging from VMware, attendees are coming here, having conversations about the challenges in their organizations, how they're overcoming those challenges. Whether they're using VMware solutions, solutions from Red Hat, Microsoft, really doesn't matter.
The call is to answer the challenges of the business. We have someone on the ground helping community solve these problems. Welcome back to the show, Brad Tompkins, Executive Director of VMUG. Welcome back. >> Thank you, Keith. It's a pleasure to be here and always enjoy talking with you. And it's great to be back here at Explorer and just seeing friends and meeting new people. It's fantastic. >> It is fantastic. It's great to see you for the first time in at least three years, right?
>> Brad: It's been a minute for sure. >> It's been a minute and it's been a lot of that during this show. And first off, let's talk about community and meeting in space. VMUG has kind of been on the forefront of that. VMUG is organized, for those who don't know, VMUG is organized in geographic chapters. VMware users getting together, talking about their challenges. Whether it's in Indianapolis, London, throughout the world. How has been coming back out of the virtual space, maybe not completely out of the virtual space, back into meeting in a physical space.
>> It's been great. This year our user cons, which as you know is our one day conferences, we do about 30 of these across the globe. We made the decision that we're just going to be in person and in person only. And we also have virtual offerings as well. So we have, if you look at everything that we offer, it is a hybrid. But we made the conscious decision if we're going to do virtual, do virtual only, make it the best virtual we can make it.
And if we're going to do in person, do in person only, let's make it the best in person meeting that we can. So it's been nice. We haven't seen the crowds that we typically would see like in 2019. But what's interesting is, the people that are there really want to be there. And we've kind of lost. We've kind of joke around that the trick or treaters aren't showing up. >> Keith: (laughing) >> The people that maybe they're coming 'cause they're trying to get a day out of the office aren't coming 'cause they're working from home anyway.
>> Keith: That's a good point, right. >> And the conversations are, people are able to go deeper. They're able to have more conversations, more serious conversations. I've heard that from leaders, I've heard that from members, and I've also heard it from sponsors. And so being at events like that, you know before it's like, hey can I scan 300-400 people. Now 300 or 400 people aren't there. But the 200 people that are, they're able to have deeper, longer conversations and shorten that sales cycle.
>> Yeah I had the, we did a session yesterday with the CTO of ADV and the, a CTO from CloudFlare. And the audience was sparse but the people that were there, they were engaged. And I really thanked them for taking out this time because they could have consumed this content via YouTube. The people who are coming to these shows in person are here to have conversations. >> Brad: Yes. >> They're not here just to, I like the term trick or treaters.
They're out to get the office and the free T-Shirt. I can buy my own T-Shirt now. So let's talk about the journey. You folks are kind of at the tip of the spear of the conversation. You have people who are, I don't want to call 'em trick or treaters, but they're professional. I had a conversation with Kelsey Hightower yesterday, he said what he finds interesting about the VMware community and the VMware conferences. That these people here are professional VMware administrators.
They are, it's not that they're system administrators, they're professional VMware administrators. Over the years there's been this one to one relationship between your job title and the product that you're using to deliver the value. That's starting to shift. Talk to me a little bit about that shift within the VMUG community. >> That's an interesting perception that Kelsey has and he's really nailed it, right? You know we talk about the V admin and those kind of things. And the V is really vSphere.
It might be virtual, whatever, but we're all running this on, you know, vSphere and that kind of thing. And what our members are telling us and what we're doing from a content perspective is they realize that their job has to be more than just the V admin. And they want to continue that journey, might be moving up the stack. With VMware you've got so many options. And it's, what's important is it's not about replacing vSphere and go do something else, it's vSphere and.
And VMware has done a good job of saying you know, you know vSphere. So in the comfort of that software that you know so well, we can add things like VSAN. And you know okay, now you're HCI. We can add additional security things to it. Tansu, Kubernetes, all these sort of things. You've got the base to do it. You know vSphere so well. So just stay current and add to it. And then you can go wherever you want to with that.
Maybe you want to go down the EUC pad. Maybe you want to go into more security, more networking, whatever it is, but the base is there. But our members are telling us that they know they've got to move and add to their skillset. And what's interesting is it's not only technical skillset that they're looking for. They are now seeing that role be, you know we're not just a group that keeps the blinky lights on. We're at the table now with the business units and we need to have conversations about technology can help you get "X" to market quicker.
Can help you get your customers service quicker. Let me tell you how IT can do that. And also they need to be a part of that conversation from a security perspective. >> So Brad, you're having many of the same challenges that CTOs and CIOs are having expanding landscape. >> Brad: Yes. >> VMUG and VMUG purview is very different than it was 10 years ago, five years ago, even two years ago. VMware is much broader. The users are asking for more but at the same time you have finite resources.
How are you delivering the value to people's careers? They're looking at well, I still need to know vSphere maybe almost as deeply as I used to know it but I also need to know a little bit about Tansu. I need to know about management. I need to know about relationships. I need to still manage my career. How are you serving that community at the level that you need to? >> We take a lot of feedback. We do a lot of surveys.
We do those kind of things. We also look at the data from the sessions that we have. And what we found is you know, you take a vSphere session, it's always going to be popular at a VMUG right? We're doing the hands on lab, What's New, and you know, Seven-O. That's what we've done and now we've got ADOS so we'll update it. But those will be packed. Like, people want that. But what we're also seeing is the, we kind of break it up into core, emerging, and future.
Those future sessions, you know and maybe that's Tansu, Kubernetes, Cloud, those kind of things, people are interested in that too. Now we don't have as many of those sessions but they're still well attended. So when we look at that data and we're like, all right, we know to get the amount of diversity in these sessions we kind of look at that data and able to decide, okay we need to have two or three sessions of the future stuff. We need to have a dozen of the core stuff.
And then we've got some emerging stuff in there as well. So it's really interesting looking at the data and you know people vote with their attendance. Another piece of it is we can supplement that through the in person events with the virtual events. You know we've got a big, we do four big virtual events a year and it's interesting to get that data as well. 'Cause we can not only know what sessions they go to but how long are they in there?
And do they, you know, go for 10 minutes and then they're, oh I'm not doing that one I'm going to do something else? So we're like anything else. We want as much data as we can to help us make data driven decisions. And that's, those are things that the board is constantly asking the team for, asking me for. Saying you know, how are we making decisions? Because we do have a limited amount of resources and we want to make sure we're serving our members the best we can.
>> So I want to talk about that a little bit more. 0, or to VSAN 8. Massive. Going to be massive quality. Everybody wants that. Everybody wants to know troubleshooting networking issues in vSphere 8. Those are just the core of the audience. And then there's kind of this debate. And CIOs and CTOs know it too. There is the things that my people want to do. And then there's the things that my people need to do.
Like there's going to be interest in Tansu but maybe there needs to be a conversation, a higher level conversation about Kubernetes in general. And that's the veggies. We got to give our crew the veggies. How are you balancing giving the VMUG crew the veggies that they need to have along with the dessert that they want? >> Yeah. One of the things that we like to say that we do at our events is give the members two things. One, what you need to do your job better tomorrow?
So I would, you know that's probably the veggies but then also, you know, what do you need to know that's coming down the road that maybe you're not thinking about right now. And a perfect example is Containers and Kubernetes. I hear from a lot of members, of course VMUG membership, you know, membership is free. So we've got Enterprise, Commercial, SMB, and membership is for individuals. And it's for end users, partners, VMware employees. So it's all of us here. But when I talk more to the commercial and SMB they're like, well, I'm not a dev shop.
Why do I need to know about Kubernetes? Why do I need to know about Containers? We don't do any of that. And I'm like, I hear ya. And you might not be right now but what's going to happen is the vendors that you're buying from are now going to start to deliver this to you in a container. And you're going to need to know how to manage that to consume that product. And they're you know, sometimes light bulbs go off and they're like okay so I do need to be prepared for that.
The other thing is options. You know, people want options. And so if you stay current on vSphere, you've got now connectivity, not only to ingest Containers and Kubernetes, and those kind of things, but also you've got the, all the hyperscalers out there or the many thousand VCPP's out there that now you can connect up with. You know 10-15 years ago doing disaster recovery When I was running a data center and you'd have to buy two sands, and two everything and all this kind of stuff.
You know, now just do DR With a hyperscaler. Do you know, DR as a service. I mean, that's something that there's no point in buying the two. And that's a perfect example with even a commercial and SMB to start thinking about multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, and how they need to consume that. And at least have the options to do it when needed. So it's exciting time. >> So again, you do talk to a lot of VMUG members, a lot of VMware users.
Is the average V admin, are they worried about their job? Like, are they worried that they're going to be automated out of a job? So the SMB that's commercial market. For those who are not familiar like, with the VMware vernacular, SMB, small medium business. Pretty common but commercial is kind of that step above SMB where people like me are saying, well you should probably be all cloud. Like, why are you still having a vSphere server with 25 servers? That kind of doesn't make sense.
You can go to the public cloud. What's the V admin role looking like for that SMB commercial V admin in the future? >> So that role is definitely changing. And that's why our members, again, we talked about it earlier. They recognize they got to do vSphere and. So it's, they've got to add to it. I do think that that traditional, if I'm just staying focused on the V admin role, those jobs are becoming less and less. And the reason that is is because VMware's done a great job of making this easy.
So now it doesn't take 10 people to run those you know, hundred servers. You know, one or two people can do it now. Also with as a service those are things that our members are asking about. Obviously, you know, any major company is pushing as a service, VMware included. And we do hear that, wait a minute, you know, that's what I used to do. You know, take vSphere Plus. Wait, I was upgrading vCenter server. But most of them are past that and they realize that's okay.
I've got plenty to do. I've got plenty to learn. And a great example is Microsoft Exchange, right? Nobody's running Exchange anymore. They're all doing it in the cloud and like, who better to manage that than Microsoft? Get that off your list, get back to learning your business and find out what your business is doing. Learn more about it. So then you can be a champion from the IT side of things for your business and say hey, business unit.
Let me tell you how I can be a differentiator for you. Let me tell you how IT can be a differentiator. Because the companies that aren't thinking about it that way, You know, I don't know what kind of future they're going to have. Because every company really needs to think I'm an IT company. I'm a compute type company in whatever industry they're in. But they need to be thinking, how can you serve members? How can you serve customers? How can you get things to market quicker?
And that's where if you start consuming as a service and trying to do more in the cloud or whatever that mix is for you, the time that you free up, that's where you can focus on. And that can really see your career, you know, take off because they're like, wow. This person is bringing such value to the business and not just value to the IT department. >> Well, Brad, I've been a member of VMUG for at least 10 years now. And I remember beating this drum five, six, seven years ago.
>> Oh yes. >> And now it's come full circle and we're starting to see kind of these warnings take place but it's not too late. Whether you're participating in a VMUG local user con event, there's still meetups that happens within the local chapters. You can still volunteer and become a VMUG leader yourself. You can raise your hand up and say, you know what? There's not, you can reach out to Brad. and the VMUG team say, hey, there's not a VM chapter near me.
How do I create one? This community is ever evolving, ever growing, and the conversations are deep and meaningful. You want to learn more about the CTO advisor? com. Stay tuned for more wall to wall coverage of VMware Explorer, 2022.
