It’s been a whirlwind week for the SiliconAngle and Wikibon team, as we wrap up another great broadcast from VMworld 2011.  Before we pack up, our show hosts John Furrier, Dave Vellante and Alex Williams took a few moments to recap the highlights of this week’s event, and sharing thoughts on what we can expect to see in the coming year (full video below).  With over 70 guests including several high profile industry CEOs, 19 spotlights, and several in-depth segments from top VMware partners, theCube has been the heartbeat of VMworld, picking up on all the trends, all the concerns and all the hopes for VMware’s growing ecosystem.

Starting with the newest editor on staff, the wrap up discussion turns to Williams to see his thoughts as a first time attendee to VMworld.  And for him, it was one of the most interesting tech events he’s been to.  “Virtualization is having this vaporizing effect,” Williams enthuses.

For Furrier, the big theme he picked up on was disruption.  “The mega-trend we’re seeing with cloud, social and mobile is about hardware — all the hardware that powers the network and storage is being forced down and commoditized,” he says.  “Take it up a notch and you’re talking about the application market for the enterprise and the consumer.  Finally, there’s the user.  The user experience is tying it all together.  In each of these theaters and at the center is startups, innovation.  It’s causing the big guys to rethink how they sell and do services.”

What impressed Vellante is the vision of the software mainframe.  It’s a concept that may bore a lot of people, but it’s one VMware is re-working in order to better support growing demand around applications and their integration.  “VMware has executed on that vision extremely well,” Vellante points out.

“Last year they rolled out the concept and this year is about implemenation,” Furrier adds.  “Ultimately what I heard is the disruption of the ecosystem, validated by all this buzz.  Their ecosystem is growing.  As VMware starts to mature their ecosystem, next year we’re going to see power points move to case studies.  It’s still early, and people are making changes.”


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Speaking to that maturing ecosystem, Williams notes some things he picked up on roving the show floor.  “You see a lot of collaboration going on out there.  The people I listen to and follow–where do they show up?  They were here.  Why?  Because there’s interesting developments in the space.  We’re seeing this battle go up the stack.  And we look at what’s happening with VMware and Salesforce–they’re going head to head.”

Certainly, as VMware builds on its initial products and gains more partners within its ecosystem, it steps on some toes spanning other areas of the broader cloud industry.  During one of Williams’ panels, the matter of VMware competing with Salesforce and Microsoft was brought p, as SaaS becomes a more prevelant aspect of integrated cloud services for the enterprise.

And as VMware looks to expand its ecosystem, there are a few areas that demand attention.  With VMware working its way into the majority of servers across the industry, they’re really sitting in the driver’s seat, which brings up the issue of lock in.  Vellante notes that he’s already hearing some grumbling about pricing and end user licensing, a concern that was raised over the summer with the launch of vSphere 5.  VMware has a fine line to walk, and the build out of their platform will only continue to present a challenge for VMware’s business model moving forward.

The other area VMware will need to pay attention to is security.  Being so prominant in this space, VMware will need to be a leader, and build security into its products.  This means moving past compliance, and finding real solutions.

So what’s the outlook for VMware moving forward?  “Performance and availability, and mobility,” says Vellante.  “What a difference between last year and this year with VDI do-over.  Security is the big area for me.  The ecosystem is over-stating capabilities and VMware has a lot more work to do.  This is VMware’s problem and they need to solve this.  Yes, they need help from the ecosystem, but they need to build it into their architecture.”

Williams looks at VMware from a business perspective, noting the company’s goals hitting $10 billion in revenue.  “They want to virtualize everything,” he says.  “They have to start thinking about, ‘what does virtualization enable?’  It’s an enabler to join lots of things.  The post-PC era ties into this.  End user computing is more critical.  Mobile virtualization is a big topic and you’ll see lots of competition in this space.  Citrix and Microsoft are competing here.”

Furrier follows up Williams’ statement by emphasizing the consumer experience.  “We’re going to see a massive competitive landscape for VMware integration and differentiation,”  he says.  “With the emphasis on delivering solutions, the demand for cloud is so massive, and it will keep vendors in check to deliver real solutions.”  Let the shake-out begin.