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Looking into the future at VMworld

August 13th, 2012

VMware’s US mega conference, VMworld kicks off in San Francisco in just over 2 weeks time. 19000 people attended in Las Vegas last year (we will have to see whether the choice of venue affects the numbers for this year!)

This will be my first time attending VMworld US as living in London I have attended VMworld Europe previously so am excited to see the differences, enjoy the bigger conference and meet some more fellow vExperts and other community members.

There’s obviously a huge amount that goes on at the conference from the keynote speaches, breakout sessions, panel discussions, labs, formal and informal meetings, and general networking so working out what to actually see with so much going on is harder than many people would assume.

VMware also use the conference as an opportunity to accounce new products or updated versions of products but these are generally not announced beforehand as VMware wants to keep the wraps on and use the exposure of the conference to highlight what they are up to.

Many of the conference sessions however include information on what may be coming up in future versions of existing products from VMware and its partners. These may not be the headline items announced at the keynotes but a glimpse of future strategy and product development which are important if you work with the product.

We all love finding out about new stuff so I’ve been going through the VMworld Content Catalogue to find out all the sessions that may tease us with a sneak peak at the future so you can get ahead of the game!

Happy session hunting!

Hover over the links to see a description of the session.
End User Computing
EUC has been a major focus area for VMware over the past few years with many aquisitions and product enhancements. There are quite a few products that have already been announced but not released so VMworld is a great opportunity to find out more about the new offerings.
EUC1351 – Directions in End-user Computing: The Post-PC Era
SPO1325 – Strategies for Creating Tomorrow’s Workplace, Today

Octopus
Octopus is secure Dropbox for the Enterprise and is a product that has been in Beta for a while and may be one of the official VMworld announcements.
EUC2128 – Project Octopus: Personal Cloud / Team Cloud — Next Generation File Sharing from VMware
EUC2406 – Project Octopus: Technical Deep-dive and Beta Learnings
GD52 – Octopus with Andrew Hawthorn
EUC1526 – VMware Horizon: Upcoming Attractions and Roadmap

Horizon Application Manager
Horizon Application Manager is a new product. It’s an Application Store front where you can centrally present all your SaaS, Web and Windows Applications and Desktops to your users in a simple to manage interface.
EUC1453 – Managing from the Middle with Horizon
EUC1455 – VMware Horizon Deep Dive and Best Practices
EUC1526 – VMware Horizon: Upcoming Attractions and Roadmap
GD53 – Horizon Application Manager with Andrew Johnson

Horizon Mobile and VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP)
MVP is another new product to allow you to run multiple virtual instances of an Android phone on a single physical smartphone so you can for example have a secure work phone operating virtually on your unsecure personal phone.
GD54 – Horizon Mobile with Craig Newell
EUC1822 – VMware Horizon Mobile: Mobility Management within the Enterprise
EUC1823 – What Makes a Mobile Workspace Better? Security and Technical Details for VMware Horizon Mobile

AppBlast
AppBlast is a remote display protocol which hasn’t been released yet to allow you to use Windows apps on any device.
EUC1526 – VMware Horizon: Upcoming Attractions and Roadmap

ThinApp
ThinApp is an existing application virtualisation product.
EUC2671 – VMware ThinApp Technology Review and Evolution
TEX1937 – End User Computing and Horizon Roadmap (TAP only)

Socialcast
Socialcast is an Enterprise Social Network
EUC2909 – Using Socialcast to Build a Successful Internal Social Collaboration Community
EUC2592 – Gain Competitive Advantage with Enterprise Social: Best Practices from Leading Companies on the Front Lines

SlideRocket
SlideRocket is web based PowerPoint but no VMworld sessions talk about it although there is a lab.

Datacenter and Cloud Infrastructure
These are the traditional infrastructure products which currently make up the majority of VMware’s offering.

Datacenter of the future
INF-VSP2203 – Datacenter of the Future

DynamicOps
VMware has announced it has signed an agreement to purchase DynamicOps which is a cloud automation product. Interestingly it allows you to manage VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer as hypervisors, HP, Dell & Cisco physical hardware and VMware, Amazon and Windows Azure clouds.
My thinking is VMware’s plans are to create a vCloud Director lite product for SMBs and Enterprises that don’t require the advanced networking of vCD but would like the automation.
Book to see this session to find out their plans.
OPS-CIM2179 – Transforming Your Cloud with VMware: Day One – Building Your Cloud

Nicira
VMware has recently purchased Nicira a Software Defined Networking (SDN) company. This is VMware’s most serious network portfolio expansion to date.
INF-NET3457 – Nicira and the Future of Software Defined Networking

Networking
INF-NET2313 – Software-Defined Networking and Security
INF-NET1927 – vCloud Networking: an Extensible and Open Platform
INF-NET2161 – VMware Networking 2012: Enabling the Software Defined Network
INF-NET2166 – Leaders Series: “How I Built My SDN-based Cloud”
INF-NET2162 – VXLAN Deep Dive

Storage
INF-STO2143 – Software-Defined Storage – VMware’s Storage Vision & Strategy
INF-STO2223 – Tech Preview: vSphere Integration with Existing Storage Infrastructure
INF-STO2192 – Tech Preview of a Software-defined Storage Technology
SPO3338 – The Latest in IT Transformation with EMC and VMware

vCloud Director
INF-NET1927 – vCloud Networking: an Extensible and Open Platform
OPS-CSM1449 – Tech Preview of the Next Generation of vCloud Connector
INF-VSP2164 – Automation of vCloud Director Disaster Recovery

Yes, there’s still more to come from the recently rewritten HA component of vSphere along with new bits for vMotion, DRS & FT.
HA
INF-BCO2382 – VMware vSphere HA Recommendations to Maximize Virtual Machine Uptime
INF-BCO2807 – vSphere HA and Datastore Access Outages – Current-Capabilities Deep-Dive and Tech Preview

vMotion
INF-VSP1549 – Insight Into vMotion: Architectures, Performance, Best Practices, and Futures

DRS
INF-VSP2825 – DRS: Advanced Concepts, Best Practices and Future Directions

FT
INF-BCO2655 – VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance for Multiprocessor Virtual Machines—Technical Preview and Best Practices

vShield
Should give some information on what VMware’s partners have up their sleaves for vShield Endpoint.
INF-SEC2042 – Winning with vShield Endpoint – Success Stories From Our Partner Ecosystem

vSphere Replication
vSphere replication is not a product by itself but a storage replication engine which can be used by Site Recovery Manager so you don’t have to have SAN replication.
INF-BCO1505 – VMware vSphere Replication: Technical Walk-Through with Engineering

Management
VMware has realised that its customers need to manage more than just VMware virtual machines and needs to strengthen its management products particularly with the push soon from Microsoft (hence its purchase of DynamicOps) but there are warnings from Gartner on how difficult this can be.
INF-VSP3221 – VM Scare? Heterogeneous Virtualization’s Impact

This one looks particularly interesting as it will show what VMware’s plans are to further integrate their management products around vCenter into a tighly integrated Cloud Infrastructure Suite.
INF-VSP3046 – What’s New with Cloud Infrastructure Suite: From Management Application to Integrated Applications and Extensible Platform

The future of IT automation for SMB, could this be something to do with Dynamic Ops?
SS1021 – Automate and Simplify IT for Small and Midsize Business (SMB)

Application Platform
The Application Platform is probably fairly new to many VMware customers and a very different set of skills that are required to the traditional infrastructure products.
Cloud Foundry
TEX2198 – Cloud Application Platform Roadmap (TAP only)

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