Why Do You NOT Love Going to VMworld?

August 12, 2011

By Andi

In my last post, I asked why you love going to VMworld, and gave you a few of my reasons – like the people, the technology, the announcements, the sessions, the labs, and the parties.

But like any business trip, it is not all fun and games, beer and skittles, rainbows and unicorns.

So why do you *not* like going to VMworld?

Like my last post, I’ll go first. Here are some things I really do *not* love about going to VMworld – as well as some upsides to take the sting off :

Las Vegas – Moscone at San Francisco was great, but I have been to Vegas so much now that I am getting tired of it.
- Upside: if it has to be in Vegas, I think the Venetian is the best venue...
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Why Do You Love Going to VMworld?

August 12, 2011

By Andi

I love going to VMworld. It may be my favorite conference of the year (after CA World, of course!).

If you love going to VMworld too, then I would really like to know why.

I’ll start …

For me, the best part of going to VMworld is the people, the technology, the announcements, the sessions, the labs, the parties, and the buzz:

I meet great friends, colleagues, customers, analysts, tweeps, and journalists who I hardly see during the year – even though I never seem to have enough time to see everyone I want to!
The labs are reportedly excellent, and it is hard to beat them for in-depth hands-on training. I’m hoping to finally attend these myself this year, if only I can find the time!
There are always interesting announcements, whether from VMware or their partners (like

…

The Coming Crisis of IT Management – More Opportunity Than Challenge

August 8, 2011

By Andi

The Coming Crisis of IT Management – More Opportunity Than Challenge

I saw an interesting post at Forbes.com last week titled ‘The Coming Crisis of IT Management,’ lamenting that “consumerization, virtualization, cloud computing, software as a service, mobility are all increasing the complexity of the job of managing IT by orders of magnitude.”

I certainly cannot disagree with that. I have written about these topics extensively, most recently tackling the impact of consumerization of IT.

By looking at the problem through the lens of the (perhaps less than) average CIO — the follower, the ‘lights-on’ manager, the order taker – Forbes.com contributor Dan Woods is painting doom and gloom instead of highlighting the potential for the innovative CIO to embrace and extend these trends to drive business advantage.

To me, this is missing the real story — that these changes are more opportunity than challenge.

Consumerization of IT

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About 70 per cent of local servers have been virtualised but it’s not about the numbers: Unisys

August 5, 2011

By Andi

Hafizah Osman from ARN was on hand for my Virtualisation and Cloud plenary session at the CA World Expo in Australia, and gave it a great write-up:

One of the problems that arises during virtualisation is virtual stall as management tipping points emerge between the different stages, according to CA Technologies vice-president of strategic solutions, Andi Mann.

“About 65 to 70 per cent of servers in Australia have been virtualised but it’s not just about the numbers. It’s about what you are doing with them – how well are you moving along this maturity curve,” Mann told delegates at CA World Expo 2011 in Sydney.

Read the whole article here – About 70 per cent of local servers have been virtualised but it’s not about the numbers.

Consumerization of IT – Your Responsibility, Your Opportunity

June 28, 2011

By Andi

There is a revolution happening with the rise of social, mobile, and cloud computing, the blurring lines between business and personal, and the proliferation of connected devices. This ‘consumerization of IT’ is forcing radical change on businesses (and governments), which are in turn forcing radical change on IT.

This is clear from a fascinating new research study conducted by IDC (PDF) , released this week by CA Technologies, into how the consumerization of IT is affecting business, and how IT is changing to accommodate this change.

And guess what …

It’s all about you!

Consider how you are driving demand for online technology.

This new IDC research shows that the majority of connected consumers (like you) regularly use e-mail, manage finances, pay bills, shop, use instant messaging, log into social websites, watch videos, download applications, and view photos – all...
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The Cost of Proprietary vs. Public Cloud

June 22, 2011

By Andi

The Cost of Proprietary vs. Public Cloud

After Australia’s Melbourne IT unceremoniously dumped VMware vCloud Express, I wondered whether proprietary offerings like vCloud Express can provide the margin to compete with equivalent open source cloud offerings (e.g. based on Xen or KVM).

I am not alone either. Respected analyst Dale Vile (co-founder of Freeform Dynamics) posed similar questions on Twitter.

One VMware employee asserted that vCloud Express pricing is “very competitive with any cloud”

In response, one VMware employee posted a Virtacore vCloud Express price list and asserted that vCloud Express pricing is “very competitive with any cloud” and that the cost of proprietary cloud was a “non-issue”.

However, it turns out that the ‘non-issue’ status of vCloud Express pricing is far from universal, even within VMware. At the recent Cloud Expo event (my roundup and slides for my three sessions are here), another VMware employee seemed to…

El Reg guide to the Private Cloud

June 12, 2011

By Andi

I had the great pleasure of talking with The Register’s Nathan Coates about my experience in what applications makes are a good fit for private cloud deployments. Nathan actually ended up quoting me in his article, which is excellent reading!

“The key environments for private cloud we are seeing now tend to be project-based,” says Andi Mann, vice-president of virtualisation product marketing at CA Technologies. There’s plenty that fits into this category, of course, from engineering systems and one-off analytics jobs through test environments to web and collaboration services.

You can read all of Nathan’s article here – El Reg guide to the Private Cloud.