So it’s fair to say that when VMware announced that the iconic ‘VMworld’ event (which had been running since 2004 when 1,500 pioneers came together in San Diego to learn about ‘Virtualisation’ in IT) was to be evolved into a new event with a new focus – VMware Explore, there were plenty who were nervous (myself included). However it turns out that none of us needed to be.
So what made VMware Explore work so well, a few things …
A solid Heritage and Breadth of content
VMworld comes with an incredible heritage and momentum, and all of the best bits of VMworld were carried over, for example the hugely popular Hands On Labs (HoL) experience that ensured those attendees who wanted to get their hands on the technology could do so with all of the guidance and support of the amazing HOL team could provide them with.
Alongside the hands-on expecience for those wanting to play with the technology, on Monday we hosted a sell out Executive Summit event for CxO level attendance from some of Europe’s largest organisations – I was lucky enough to present straight after Raghu Raghuram on stage, talking about what’s needed in the boardroom of organisations as they execute their Digital Strategy – helped by Matthew Steiner and some great audience interaction.
So not only did Explore cater for those who wanted to get hands on with a command line in a console, and those who wanted to network with their CxO peers (and everyone in between) it also brought something different – and that’s what’s going to seal VMware Explore as ‘THE’ event going forward for anyone in Multi-Cloud.
You see in previous years, if you looked at the sponsor list for VMworld, it was focussed on server, switch and hardware vendors – which you’d expect, those were the technologies that VMware’s vSphere, vSAN and NSX were virtualising. Fast forward to 2022 and those sponsors and the largest stands in the Expo belonged to the Hyperscale Clouds, AWS, Azure, Google. Funnily enough the role that VMware plays in all that has barely changed – fundamentally ABSTRACTING resources, POOLING those resources together and then AUTOMATING their deployment – the key difference being that those resources come not just from on-prem private clouds now, but from across the Hyperscaler landscape.
Customers, Partners and their stories everywhere
One change that really stood out this year was a focus on Customer and Partner stories, everywhere. As someone who has presented time after time at VMworld, I can confirm that nothing tells the story better than getting a customer on stage with you – and this year at VMware Explore ensuring that customers were hearing from customers (and partners) was a key theme in content selection (and it showed). The feedback that I had was that people were excited and engaged to feel they weren’t just hearing from VMware folks, but were hearing real, in the trenches content from customers and practitioners.
… and where else can you go for a Multi-Cloud event ?
The light-bulb moment I saw from customers about the event, was the realisation that in the morning they could (for example) attend a session on better cost management of their Private Cloud environment, and then in the afternoon get guidance on taking that Private Cloud into the Public Cloud seamlessly … whilst also being able to get hands-on and talk to one of the Hyperscalers that you might want to work with. As someone who as attended Google and AWS events, I can tell you that neither of them play well with each other – and so a single event, allowing you to ‘Explore’ the Multi-Cloud universe makes a lot of sense, and that was the feeling that I got from the attendees that I spoke to.
So what about next year ?
With Multi-Cloud here to stay, and customers are more and more looking to get out of their ‘Cloud Chaos’ and focus on a ‘Cloud Smart’ approach to running their IT. Expect to see VMware Explore grow, and rapidly as the word gets out that there that VMware Explore takes the amazing heritage and energy that VMworld has always had – and supercharges it for the Multi-Cloud world !