by
Brian Madden
I'm sitting in the opening keynote for VMworld 2010 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The keynote starts at 9:00 local time. Updates to this post will be added in reverse-chronological order, so if you're just starting to read this now, start from the bottom and read-up to the top.
Since BrianMadden.com is a desktop-focused site, we'll be blogging and tweeting about the desktop and application aspects of this keynote.
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10:41 Keynote over. Not that much excitement really except for the last 5 minutes. I'll be digging into a lot more info about Horizon today and tomorrow.
10:39 Nice job Noah. I love when old-school TS folks are on stage.
10:36 There's now an official View client for iPad. (No more need Wyse PocketCloud for $30?) Whoa, they're showing the iPad app doing Project Horizon type stuff, with windows and SaaS apps. Yikes this is cool!
10:35 VMware has acquired tricepher for SSO integration with Horizon.
10:34 Noah & Steve are showing apps on the desktop that are automatically put there when you login. But it's web/SaaS apps AND ThinApp apps. They're showing that the SaaS apps are integrated with single sign-on too, so clicking on SalesForce.com launches it without logging on again. More on this tomorrow.
10:32 SWEET! Project Horizon creator Noah Wasmer is on stage. Noah is an old-school Terminal Server guy.. Woo-hoo!!
10:31 Steve is showing off Project Horizon, (the release name for Project Origami.)
10:31 Talking about how IT is device-centric still, despite that he spends only probably 20% of his time running Windows apps. The rest is browser, RIAs, iPad, etc.
10:29 Talking about acquisition costs of desktops. He's now saying that View 4.5 desktop acquisition costs are less than $500 per desktop based on their reference architectures.
10:28 Officially launching View 4.5, with Win7 support, Offline support, Mac support, and vSphere 4.1 support. New administrative experience and scalability into tens of thousands. No mention of Persona or client hypervisor.
10:26 But how do you make these SaaS apps accessible everywhere? That's what their new "end user computing" initiative is. "A consumer cloud experience for all applications." That's the long-term goal. But v1 is to focus on traditional desktops, which is View and ThinApp.
10:23 Today they're announcing vFabric (a cloud application platform) as a way to write new apps for the cloud. They want to avoid the "Hotel California" effect. (Where you check in to the cloud but never check out.) They're working with Google to get Spring into the AppEngine, so you can write apps in Spring and run them internally or externally. And they want to do the same with PHP and RAILs.
10:23 SpringSource is the new framework and tools. They will continue to invest in ways to make new applications easy to write.
10:21 demo is over. They talked a lot about existing apps, but Steve plans to now talk about new apps. Where are apps headed as a whole? He again looks to the home, citing examples like Facebook.
10:15 Lots of talk about vCloud stuff.. Check out searchcloudcomputing.com for the latest. We're going into a VMware vCloud Director demo now. (This was Project Redwood.)
10:12 VMware's offering vShield antivirus offload.
10:07 Steve is talking about only paying for what he uses, and he talks about using iTunes at home and buying and renting stuff and getting a bill at the end of the month. But wait... iTunes doesn't charge you at the end of the month, they charge you every few days. So either Steve is lying about using iTunes, or he has enough money that he doesn't check his credit card statement.
10:04 But how does this "IT as a Service" tie back to real life? "Give me an app store" he says. (Or a "service catalog.") Hmm.. so yeah, nice concept, but I hope he talks about more specifics. This is something that sounds good on paper but that's kind of tricky in real life.
10:02 Steve's talking about his home life and his work life. In his home life he still wears a shirt with a collar, although it's decorated with a non-corporate approved checkered pattern. But his point is that all his stuff at home is cool (apps and gadgets and stuff), but at work he can't do all that cool stuff so he's mad. And he's picky. He wants what he wants when he wants it. (And he wants it now.)
9:59 VMware's acquiring Integrien, which does something with proactive analysis. I'm just mentioning this here for completeness.. Right now this is a vCenter thing.
9:50 Steve is talking first about Cloud Infrastructure & Management, specifically vSphere. Now he's going through what was new in vSphere 4.0 and 4.1.
9:49 History has taught us that when there are big stack changes, there are winners and losers. This is happening regardless of whether VMware gets it right or not. So now VMware Steve Herrod is coming on stage to talk about how VMware is specifically responding to these innovations and changes.
9:46 So we in IT need to deal with these devices to manage, control, etc... The Windows desktop did two things: (1) was it was the user interface, and (2) it was the mechanism through which IT mediated users' access to data, information, and applications. But those two things need to float apart. IT can't keep pace. Steve Jobs will sell you a new iPad every six months. IT can't keep up. We have to change.
9:45 "After spending the past ten years managing Windows desktops (and getting good at it), now all of the sudden there's a new animal in the zoo." He said "I'll bet 15% of you in this audience are using iPads. We (IT) didn't approve those, but we have to deal with them." <-- that's not an exact quote, but it's the gist of what he's saying.
9:44 Talking about SaaS apps. VMware is using 15 SaaS apps--none of which Paul approved ;) --but this is something where "IT will be left holding the bag."
9:39 Talking about the tide of IT moving away from existing apps... that old enterprise apps just aren't going to cut it for companies. So VMware sees a new set of technologies and innovations for applications for enterprises, tied to the new platforms, infrastructure, app platforms, etc. And this is what's based on these new open frameworks, like Spring, Ruby-on-Rails, etc. (Which hey, just happens to be what VMware is doing!) But the implication is that Windows apps are dead.
9:34 Hey.. Maritz just admitted that the "private cloud" is nothing more than a datacenter with the latest technology. (At least I think that's what he was saying.)
9:30 Now that more server instances run in VMs instead of on hardware (according to IDG) , the majority of OSes out there now don't directly control their own access to hardware. So that virtualization layer is the new infrastructure.
9:26 Paul Maritz (VMware President & CEO) is on stage. He will be speaking for the next 19 minutes and 55 seconds.
9:23 Front-runner for worthless quote of the day: Customer quote about them creating "a virtualization strategy that allows us to deliver programs and services that enable the business to be innovative and agile." blech!
9:22 Rick's saying everything must be based on open standards and interoperability to ensure freedom of choice and interoperability. Sooo... why is View vSphere-only?
9:19 Now he's talking about cost savings and IT production.. I'm not going to follow this as closely, as it's kind of high level business value of virtualization stuff that we've heard before.
9:12 There's no huge datacenter or private cloud at the bottom of the escalator like last year. This year they built a hybrid cloud with Verizon & Terremark to support the entire event. They replaced the datacenter with a "Route 66"-style cafe, showing that you can work from anywhere. But this cloud for VMworld... all the labs, all the demos, everything's coming from the cloud. And they expect to provision and build 34k VMs this week for the hands-on labs.
9:09 VMware CMO Rick Jackson is on stage. Explaining the history of VMworld. Confirmed 17,021 attendees, which is impressive considering EMEA VMworld is next month. Calling out the 55 "alumni elite" who have been at every single VMworld since 2004.
9:05 Lights are down. Kicking off which a corporate humor video about cloud computing. Use of the word "hell" and "azure" in the first 30 seconds. The video is funny enough I guess, but really? Do we need to hear what the cloud is again? (insert reference to "storms ahead," etc.
8:54 Awesome quote from Alessandro (@govirtual) "Hey, at least this can't be any worse than Michael Dell at Synergy!
8:51 Gabe Knuth is live tweeting the desktop angle of this keynote too, follow him via @gabeknuth.
8:42 Just heard Steve Herrod say they have over 17,000 attendees.
8:38 Cool! There's a dedicated blogger area with TABLES, power, and WiFi. Nice job VMworld staff!
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