virtualization.info

Here we go again. As usual virtualization.info is at the VMworld conference to live cover the keynotes and any other major announcement released by VMware during the event.

Paul Maritz, CEO, is today’s keynote speaker. He will speak in front of 17,000 attendees, as Rick Jackson, CMO, confirmed on stage. Is VMworld on track to compete against the Oracle OpenWorld in terms of audience?

Before Maritz performance, VMware starts with a funny video that tries to describe what cloud computing is without using any technical jargon. The choice demonstrates how early-stage this market still is considered.

Martiz on stage.
He reports that in 2010 the number of virtual machines surpasses for the first time the number of physical servers deployed (more than 10M).
He also reports that VMware has over 25,000 partners and over 50,000 VMware Certified Professionals (VCP) worldwide.

Maritz says that VMware is committed to innovate on automation and management to decrease OpEx. Seeing that the primary focus is on automation is very positive: datacenter orchestration has been overlooked for too much time.
He also says that innovation should also focus on the way infrastructure resources should be purchased.

Now Maritz is making a case for the SpringSource acquisition (and all the others related to that): are legacy apps on new infrastructure enough?
VMware believes that the world embracing cloud computing would move on more sophisticated, next generation web applications , and this implies the need for a new application platform, made of management tools (Hyperic), open frameworks (Spring) and common services (APIs).

In this new world the challenge is to grant end user access though a number of different new devices, while managing them as part of the enterprise infrastructure.
So VMware sees the need for a new stack, made of three pieces: a new infrastructure, a new application platform and a new end user access.

The message this year is extremely mature, and it definitively presents an articulated new mission. VMware is working to go well beyond its role as a virtualization player, and it’s doing a good job at communicating it during this keynote.

Martiz leaves the stage to Dr. Stephen Herrod, CTO and Senior Vice President of R&D at VMware.
He starts with a recap of the innovations introduced in vSphere 4.1, with a first focus on policy driven SLAs through Storage and Network I/O Controls.

Herrod announces on stage the VMware’s acquisition of a company called Integrien.
Integrien flagship product, Alive, is a real-time performance analytics solution that analyzes and correlates data across the monitored IT infrastructure.

It will be interesting to see how Alive will integrate with the (many) other monitoring solutions VMware is offering today (including the SpringSource Hyperic).

Herrod also announces the availability of vCloud Director 1.0 (formerly vCloud Service Director).
Interestingly, VMware places this new product side by side with vSphere and vCenter as key tiers of the new infrastructure described by Maritz at the beginning of the keynote.

VMware has another three new products to announce, all about security and all available today: vShield Endpoint 1.0, vShield App 1.0 and vShield Edge 1.0.
vShield has been placed inside the new infrastructure as its fourth and last tier.

Another interesting aspect of this keynote is that there’s no mention of “virtual machines”. The entire discussion is focused on “applications”.

Now Herrod announces a thing called vFabric, the cloud application platform made with SpringSource, GemStone and other technologies acquired in the last year by VMware.
vFabric offers application management, data management, messaging, dynamic load balancing and app server.

Last but not least, Herrod announces the (expected) availability of VMware View 4.5.
It introduces support for Microsoft Windows 7, the offline VDI capability (through a type-2 VMM), a client for Apple Mac OS X and support for vSphere 4.1.

Herrod has a couple of “one more thing” surprise: Project Horizon, a single sign-on (SSO) portal for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, powered by the TriCipher technology, which VMware just acquired.

That’s all for today. Overall this has been one of the best, and more complex, keynotes ever delivered by VMware.
Stay tuned for the second keynote that is scheduled for Sep. 1.