VMworld 2016 Preview CTO043

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All right, you're listening to episode 43 of the CTO advisor podcast. This is our pre VM world Show and I have a special special guest to it minimum from You know what? Is it the cube? Is it the angle and Silicon Angle? Is it Wikibon? Is it all of the above? What's the official titles do? All right. Hey Keith. Thanks for having me on and so the Umbrella company is Silicon Angle media and the cube is the video brand I kind of you know sit in between the research arm, which is Wikibon and the cube the video piece So yeah, I mean, I'm an employee of Silicon Angle media But you know kind of wear the analyst hat and co-host hat for the video program and hey, you know We're gonna have awesome time at the show including some guest hosts like yourself Keith So awesome stuff and I'm looking forward to it, you know, I think you guys this is what the ninth year in a row I mean, so it's yeah, it's our it's our seventh year, even though right last year we did two sets and this year We're doing two sets so we can count those years twice.

So seven years nine years That sounds about right. Well, I love it if any of my listeners if you haven't Checked out any of the cubes content from any of the major shows because VM world was just one you guys do Oracle world You do AWS? Reinvent you're you're just all over not just infrastructure. Also the app side to what some of the app Side stuff that you guys get into. Yeah, so we've been at SAP Sapphire a number of years We've done service now.

TV is where you can check out all the content there lots of shows We have a list of where the upcoming shows are gonna be and if there's one we're not out You know ping us and let us know if we should be there Alright, so let's talk about a couple of guests that you're gonna have on Let's let's get to the biggest one off the gate Michael Dale What are you looking forward to in that interview who's gonna interview well, you know, so it will be John Furrier and myself So I've interviewed Michael once before but you know Usually it's one that you know that my boss the CEO of the company Dave Vellante does the interview?

With John Dave's got some other things he has to do that week So I will get to be there and interview the man himself Michael Dell And of course that you know, the the big thing that's on everybody's, you know Mind right now is it looks like China is signing off on the deal and that's supposed to be the last hurdle for the you know The biggest acquisition in tech history of EMC to be done. So hey Keith, maybe we might be seeing history at the show at VMworld Here's some rumblings that say that the deal might actually close out the show So maybe Michael will just announce the whole thing on the cube, you know, that'd be pretty awesome That would be pretty awesome So that that makes a pretty interesting point is the cube a closed set is can people come in and kind of watch?

What's what's the setup there at the show? We are very open So we really appreciate the support that VMware gives us at that show. We're in what they call the VM village So if you've been to VMworld before they sometimes have things in San Francisco, they called it the hang space They're calling it the VM village here Which is it's different from kind of the Expo Hall where all the vendors in the booths are this is So it's in Mandalay Bay Convention Center, it's the shoreline level two It's an area that's open like most of the day.

It has some big social media stuff. It has us I believe there's some other, you know podcasters and maybe even some other video things happening there We've got two sets side-by-side and there's plenty of room for people to come watch. We'll have some monitors We'll have speakers going good place to come watch our stuff, you know meet with us in between And you know come hang out we usually you know, draw a pretty good crowd So we'd love to have you know people listening to this come join us If you're a V expert that they are setting up extra space if you want to come in and do some ad hoc podcasting or some video content VMware is supporting the community in that way So I'm looking forward to my first show in Vegas, even though it is Vegas So back to the guests the on the others Said you guys are gonna have two sets as you mentioned the cube studio And then the director said the director said you guys gonna have Vaughn Stewart Who I don't know if the title is accurate anymore.

I thought he heard that he gave up that whole chief evangelist title great Yeah, really excited to have Vaughn on the program. You know, it's you know He's been with pure for a while now lots going on in the storage space is a you know Big area that's covered at VM world. He's been you know part of the VM working system for a long time Most people know him. I'm sure you know, does he have a vodka ball team going this year?

You know, I seem to never make it over there, but he has to have one. I know him and him and Chad This is a big thing between him and Chad and actually I think that pure storage team wins most years in a row I think at least it passed two years. They've won. So yeah, I've heard people saying they have ringers in there or something It's it's the high-performance all-flash, you know must carry over into the you know, but dodgeball arena Plus if you've not gone to the dodgeball event, Amy Lewis cheats All right, but some of the more interesting things talking about storage one of the things that's really difficult to get away from VMware and VM world in general is the sheer number of storage vendors I think me and you have similar feelings around storage What's the the big storage story around VM world?

And why is it so storage heavy you think? Well, I Mean Keith you have to think back to it, you know VMware You know solve some, you know big hairy challenges that we had in the data center But one of the things that it did was kind of make storage a little bit more complicated. It broke storage a bit It's something we've been spending the last decade Trying to fix so things like V balls take steps in that direction With what VMware is doing with virtual sand and the whole hyper converged trend is something else That's trying to really simplify this part of the ecosystem.

So there's lots of opportunity there and you know If I'm in kind of the server virtualization Marketplace, you know, I care about the servers. I care about the storage Networking is a little bit adjacent there, too, you know servers are pretty straightforward You know, we we understand how that works and the the Server virtualization space but you know storage there's still lots of opportunity and as most people know storage is really, you know It's a rough-and-tumble Industry, so it's it's very fragmented. There's a number of players fighting over it So, you know lots of good customers that should come to the show and are you know looking at and using VMware?

So there's the opportunity that everybody in the storage industry comes here. It's probably you know, the largest Industry event that has a big storage component And so that's the storage story VM world is also shaping up to be a fairly decent Networking event as well some of the big vendors that we're accustomed to the Cisco Juniper Arista all those guys will be there but Same time some interesting vendors that bleed over Mellanox does a little bit of both networking storage obviously any Storage vendors specifically you're looking forward to having a conversation with um, so yeah, I mean I love the networking stuff You know, there's you know a few of the vendors that'll be there I tell you what always gets me excited is we've got a bunch of good end-users on the program We're gonna have on if you talk in the networking space, you know VMware's got their NSX solution And I think if you're actually gonna have to you know, come do this interview with me.

It's one we're looking forward to With Columbia Sportswear, so, you know Columbia Sportswear, I've talked to their IT department in the past They're usually pretty progressive as to what they're doing And I mean, that's what I always love is talking to these kind of progressive IT shops I know you do too. So we've got you know, PGA super stores We've got I think DSW, you know and you know a handful of other, you know Kind of banks health care to some of the usual suspects when it comes to industries But you know some good user stories to be able to dig into kind of the networking piece the storage piece and some of the Other interesting areas that people are taking advantage of new technology speaking of NXX both So I will be on that one customer story interview with you And then the other one is that Dom Delfino the is he the what role is he in the VMware NSX group?

Looking yeah, Dom's got the worldwide system engineers. So he's the SVP there You know, we've had Dom on the program a number of times We had him on back when he was on the Cisco side and now he's on the VMware side So I tell you Keith I'm interested in your viewpoint because it feels to me, right? I mean remember Cisco and VMware were all throwing stones at each other when both those solutions came out and it feels like you know The the big war of words has kind of died down some they're really getting into customer deployments You know adoption is moving forward and you know They're not fighting in front of the customer so much anymore.

Is that are you seeing that kind of out in the wild? yeah, you know the I Think this goes back to when VMware first bought in this era. There was you know, this initial blip bad blood VMware laid out their NSX vision the need released the initial product and you know, there was this whole You know NSX versus ACI and I never really understood that from a mark marketing perspective. I looked at it I'm like, these are really two different solutions and as a customer I expect them to work together VMware and their strengths and the virtual network piece and then Cisco with helping me manage my physical underlay and these things just should work well together I'm glad that they've kind of put down the The weapons of mass destruction and are starting to talk a little bit more Collaboratively on how they can come to the table and help customers with two actually really interesting solutions.

Yeah, absolutely It really didn't serve the customers when it was just you know It's not like VMware was coming and saying hey, you know Of course, you're not getting rid of your switches and nor were they even saying, you know Oh, the only way to go is to go white box switch, you know, they came out with you know partner messages and you know Day one Cisco was not embracing it, but we move forward, you know Obviously Cisco's got such a dominant position in the switching marketplace that you know They're gonna be in many of these customers and VMware and its own marketplace, you know is really dominant in their position, too So the two of them definitely need to get along and it's all for the best for the customers So this leads us into kind of the last segment predictions.

So VMware obviously ESXi revenue is starting to slow. They've bet pretty much the farm on VCN in my opinion outside of the V realized management stuff the low-hanging fruit is Storage and networking vSAN NSX. You have any predictions on that or any other market VMware is going to heavily Invest or talk through during this next conference Yeah, it is going to be really interesting to see kind of the strategy that they lay forward I remember the first time I went to VMworld was back in 2010 and it looked like they were trying to push into the Application space kind of the old Microsoft playbook model with palmer It's and many of the you know, former Microsoft executives and you know, they pulled back on that They switched to kind of the SDDC and you know, three-tier models So, you know what where is VMware going to push beyond just the hypervisor things like AirWatch are doing well You know NSX and vSAN are definitely, you know showing some some strong progress.

I tell you the early indications I'm getting is that there's not any major new initiative a Lot of it feels like kind of holding their breath waiting for the Dell deal to close if you want a prediction around VMworld You know, I think that Amazon reinvent is gonna have more people at the show this year than VMworld will which is you know kind of surprising because You know, I've been at reinvent for a number of years and I think last year it was, you know What was it 12 to 15,000?

I'm hearing it could be 20 to 25,000 this year. They're both being held in Vegas So it's you know, not the location But you know the the ecosystem around VMware has a little bit of the term I've used is Existential crisis. So there's certain VM admins that are saying hey, what's my role gonna be going forward? Just as some of the silo busting happened around virtual around kind of the infrastructure when virtualization came in Some people are trying to say hey, what's that next thing for me?

Do I do cloud native stuff? Do I? You know become a coder and a developer, you know, do I get closer to the applications? I'd love to see more from VMware as to how they're getting deeper into some of the application space not necessarily owning it But you know really enhancing that and and you know, they definitely have pieces of that you know kind of their cloud native strategy and have they've reached out to the developer community, but you know want to see how they Both, you know move forward the old stuff and you know iterate on some of the new So one of the things I'm looking forward to in talking to Don is The expansion of the NSX use case beyond I think anyone who's deploying NSX We'll talk about this and the customer use cases have primarily focused on network segmentation I think one of the things that I'm really looking forward to is an extension of kind of your AWS reinvent statement is that companies are being challenged to pull in clouds and Integrate clouds into their public clouds into their infrastructure.

So I fully expect for them to follow up on guidos Demo or preview of AWS of NSX running in AWS Last year to extend that concept to how do I glue together? I'm calling the cloud group glue NSX cloud glue How do I glue together? All these multiple cloud initiatives that I have and put it in a chunkable way that I can Understand it in an enterprise and I think that's going to be part of the story this year I'd be surprised if they don't try and pivot off of just a Microsegmentation story for NSX going forward.

So that I think that's my big Expectation is just getting in front of the cloud story with a lot of their products whether it's vSAN Air watch or NSX this how do I integrate into a ecosystem where? Cloud is becoming a more critical portion of my environment. Yeah, I mean Keith I remember back in 2012 VMware bought dynamic ops and from a management standpoint It was holding the promise of automating kind of in the multi cloud world And unfortunately, it's not just being where I've seen Cisco do the same thing you buy a company like that and then you focus it mostly on your own product and not so much how it's going to tie into things like AWS and Azure and the like It reminds me even nice era was very much a multi hypervisor environment and still supports that even though most people think of it very much for Really an ESX environment a Keith.

I there was the other news recently about Really open sourcing, you know open vSwitch there. I guess it already was open source It was what was the kind of moving it over to the Linux Foundation? I believe is what it was and any comments on that or I've beat on VMware a little bit about the lack of Kind of embracing the open source community. And so this was a good move in my opinion Yeah, I meant to do a CTO coffee chat on that.

That's fairly a big deal if you think about kind of the arms race that OVS provided VMware it was part of you know legacy part of a very open environment within the sera It was it won the de facto Linux open the Linux virtual switch wars and then a private entity in former VMware that wasn't as friendly to open source bought it and I think there was this shrink back from folks such as Cisco or brocade That would invest in a juniper themselves had their you know, their own open router and competitors to OVS so I think this will it's fairly is it's fairly a big deal, I think in the networking Open source world to have this move to a more neutral source like the Linux Foundation and I'm anxious to see What how that spurs?

Innovation and collaboration with all of the different network vendors and hopefully we can coalesce around All these other smaller projects that were trying to compete with OVS and I think it's because it was mainly a VMware driven Open source project before I'm hoping that we see a lot more innovation and contribution around it Awesome So still let's wrap up there I will over the next week and week week and a half We're gonna see an awful lot of each other working people find you Online I heard you have this super long and complex to remember Twitter handle.

Yeah, absolutely I'll spell it out. It's three adjacent letters on the alphabet. It's s T you so You know, yeah, I've got that Twitter handle. It's pretty awesome And really to reach out to there and if you're at VMworld as we mentioned come see us in the VM village If you're online hit me up on Twitter, you know Love feedback from the community as to questions you want us to ask people we should have on And you know, definitely a really busy show, but you know, hey, there's 24 hours in the day and you know We'll sleep when we get home Exactly.

There's you know, there's that whole As you're taxing off from landing or or taking off that's plenty of time to sleep Exactly. All right, so I appreciate it. That's it for this episode of the CTO advisor as always You can find us in iTunes or your favorite podcatcher Make sure to rate us in iTunes and if you have any feedback, you can follow me on twitter at CTO advisor