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Archive for November, 2014

UKVMUG: The unofficial lowdown on everything announced at VMworld

November 18th, 2014 No comments

vmug-logoI have had the pleasure today of presenting at the 4th annual UK VMware User Group conference at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull near Birmingham.

I did a whirlwind tour of everything that was announced at VMworld and believe me, there was a huge amount. OK, so no major release which is the norm (but plenty of teasers) but enough other things going on in the VMware space to fill more than a UKVMUG! I know, I’ve done the research! Even though I was at VMworld US, so much was going on that I didn’t appreciate all the new shiny things being announced and once you start getting down to the nitty gritty of everything, you will be amazed at how much is going on.

I really didn’t have time to go through everything in detail so the presentation acts as an independently curated jumping off point for you to find out more information about the announcements that matter to you. You may not care particularly about hyper-converged or OpenStack so you can flick through the slides and then head off to continue your explorations.

Thanks for having me UKVMUG!

Here’s the presentation:

Nominate a Non-Profit for Nutanix’s $500k Web-scale Wish Datacenter Makeover

November 13th, 2014 No comments

Nutanix has initiated a rather big, bold and generous program to donate to a non-profit organisation $500,000 in data center infrastructure.

The program is called Web-scale Wish and the community will get to choose the non-profit who wins the Grand Prize makeover which is made up of:

  • three Nutanix NX-3050 nodes
  • three Ultimate Software Licenses
  • three years of Nutanix Platinum Plus support
  • two-day on-site installation service by Nutanix

Anyone can nominate an organisation they feel would benefit and nominations are open until Friday November 21st. There are so many non-profit organisations doing such amazing work but often the benefits of a modern IT infrastructure are just a dream and certainly way out of reach financially for organisations committing their finances to helping others.

There are some requirements to be met from the non-profit to be considered:

  • Be a non-profit, non-partisan organisation based in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the United Kingdom
  • Have a currently working data center that could benefit from web-scale converged infrastructure
  • Be able to complete and meet Environment Assessment criteria

All the submissions will be initially judge and I’m honoured to be one of the community judges along with Stu Miniman,Douglas Brown,Michael Webster and Steve Greenberg.

The final three organisations we select will then be featured in a virtual event on Wednesday, December 10 where the entire community will have the opportunity to vote to determine the Grand Prize recipient.

This is a fantastic initiative where you can help Nutanix make a real IT difference to a non-profit you care about that needs an IT makeover and I am very proud they’ve asked me to help with the judging.

Head over to http://www.webscalewish.com/ to nominate your non-profit.

Categories: VMware Tags: ,

UK VMUG 2014, VMworld enhanced!

November 7th, 2014 No comments

The fantastic National UK VMUG is being held at the National Motorcycle Museum near Birmingham on Tuesday 18th November (note it’s a Tuesday, not the normal Thursday).

This isn’t just your run of the mill, normal VMUG (if there is such a thing!) and has been seriously enhanced over the already phenomenal 2013 version. What takes it to another level is the content that you can’t even get at VMworld…and remember, it’s free!

See the full agenda here. Sign up NOW!

The opening keynote is by VMware EMEA CTO, Joe Baguley who always delivers and as his talk is titled “CTO Rant-as-a-Service”, you can expect an inside look into what Joe sees out in the world and what gets under his skin! Of course he will be punting the VMware SDDC vision but as he talks to people day in and day out, he has a very good idea how the real world of IT works with invaluable insight into how your own company and its competitors actually do IT.

In addition, never before seen at a VMUG as far as I know, is a round table discussion with Joe called “Ask the CTO Anything”.  Seriously can you imagine having direct access to one of VMware’s most senior strategists and being able to ask him anything. Joe isn’t just your strategy marketer with a good stage presence, he’s seriously technical himself so make sure you take advantage of the opportunity.

Read more…

Categories: VMUG, VMware, VMworld Tags: , ,