VMware Explore 2022: The first two days

Days one and two of VMware Explore 2022 could not have been more opposite. Most of day one was delayed until the second day so, with the missing energy of a keynote speaker and a lack of VMware enthusiasts, day one felt a little lacklustre. Day two, however, did not disappoint.

Day two’s keynote speech was filled with big announcements, heaps of new acronyms and hyped up several new products and product versions. However, the specifics around release dates for products like VMware vSphere 8 were missing, despite these dates being something we have come to expect at these types of events.

What did go well for VMware, however, was the delivery of a cohesive strategy and product development coined “hybrid multi-Cloud” that places VMware in a position of innovation that it has not held since the release of VMware ESX 3.5 back in 2007.

So what is VMware’s “Hybrid Multi-Cloud” and why is it innovative?

Let's first go back to 2007 when IT professionals were embracing VMware ESX as it enabled them to consolidate multiple physical servers onto a single physical host. ESX worked as an abstraction layer from the server hardware enabling these new consolidated virtual servers to be run on almost any brand of server.

VMware’s new Hybrid Multi-Cloud offers a similar proposition for cloud server workloads. Virtual servers can now be managed within the familiar vSphere management platform that extends compute and storage resources to multiple cloud vendors like Azure, AWS, Oracle, IBM, and Google and also includes the traditional private on-premise.

This appears to me to not just be an extension of the vSphere product but more of a reinvention of its purpose and proposition to business digital transformation. Simply put, like server hardware brands of yesteryear, IT professionals can now look to move virtual server workloads between on-premise and different cloud infrastructure vendors using built-in services like vMotion and Storage vMotion.

One announcement I was hoping for that didn’t come was around VMware NSX pricing. VMware NSX is the price of entry to this new VMware hybrid multi-cloud solution (HCX) and I fear current pricing will turn many potential VMware hybrid multi-cloud clients away.

Conclusion

I was amazed by the extent of collaboration VMware has achieved with and most certainly amongst the different cloud vendors. To see them all in one room singing from the same hymn sheet couldn’t do anything else but leave a positive final impression for the day.

Check out Simon's photos of the conference on our Instagram here.