In the lead up to VMworld we are looking at some of the top issues we expect to unfold at the event.

The following are five discussions we expect to hear about. These are based on the current market and the correlation to VMware’s technology offerings.

Licensing Confusion?

VMware reported second quarter earnings last month. Demand for its products remains strong. But
VMware did see backlash earlier this summer when it launched a new licensing model that caused huge uproar and forced the company to make some hasty changes to the model.

The vRam licensing model aligned costs with the benefits of virtualization rather than with the physical attributes of each individual server. VMware later made a turn around and adjusted the vRam licensing in line with customer feedback.

But the licensing issue has the potential to change the view of the administrator who has developed an enterprise architecture by over allocating memory resources just in case it is needed. Sure, that’s true. And VMware is recognizing that in its new licensing structure that bases pricing on the annual overall average usage.

Services Angle: Services providers need to help customers get their heads around the licensing model changes. It’s complicated and to some extent it overshadows the benefits of vSphere 5, which are many. VMworld will be the event for this matter to get clarified in the eyes of customers, partners and service providers.

Platforms – A New Ecosystem Emerges

I’ll admit it. I am an unabashed fan of what VMware has done with CloudFoundry. It has helped the company continue its developer focus, which we’ve seen build with the success of the Spring platform.

Last week, CloudFoundry announced support for the RabbitMQ messaging service. It is available as a free public beta. Cloud Foundry already supports multiple application services including MySQL, MongoDB and Redis.

We should see the growth of the CloudFoundry ecosystem at VMworld as a number of CloudFoundry partners are there to promote their integrations. And we expect to see a number of announcements about new partners. This ecosystem shows no signs of slowing down and should get at a lot of buzz at the event.

Services Angle: CloudFoundry is less than a year old, making VMworld its honeymoon event.  The challenge will be in convincing the customers of the benefits that come with developing on a platform.The platform discussion is still nascent and there are lots of options out there. Why should CloudFoundry be the choice over them all? We’ll get more into this in a later post for pre-VMworld coverage.

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

How many mobile apps have been introduced in the past year that address management of a cloud infrastructure? How about mobile virtualization? Really, there have not been that many developments but we expect that to change as tablets and smartphones continue its well-documented impacts on the enterprise. The bigger story we see is how virtualization affects an infrastructure that now has an exponential number of devices connected to the network. For example, what happens when thousands of devices are connected into a virtualized infrastructure? That can have a hellish impact on storage. We’ve been covering this issue pretty closely and expect the impact of mobile on virtualization to be a hot topic as customers look at the new options and compare it to their traditional storage environments.

Services Angle: The momentum is for a new generation of flash memory solutions. Is the mainstream market ready? How does this correlate to the overall transition to a services infrastructure?

The VMware Cloud: Competitors and Alliances

VMware executives at last year’s VMworld launched a plan to integrate public clouds with enterprise data centers. It’s called vCloud Director. The premise being that a company can virtualize its infrastructure, providing a foundation to use a public cloud for the demands that come with the scaling amount of data that comes with so much of our workload moving online. Service providers in turn would integrate its operations to fit with a VMworld centric enterprise environment. CSC is an example of a services provider that has adopted Vmware’s solution.

The market is competitive. Citrix made a big move this summer with the acquisition of Cloud.com. That puts Citrix square in the open-source cloud camp. In contrast, VMware is seeking service providers that will integrate VMware vCloud Director as the standard.

Services Angle: The real story is about business agility. The CIO’s role is increasingly about serving customers that expect services from the IT organization. That’s the world of IT. How VMware is positioning itself will be of keen interest this year. One year later, how is VMware’s vCloud Director strategy unfolding?

Big Data? VDI? Virtualization? The Real Issue is Storage

Dave Vellente of Wikibon wrote a great post in May based upon a panel he moderated. He laid out the issues that are shaping IT this year that customers are citing. These three are the biggies: big data, VDI and virtualization. The virtualization topic is of a different variety compared to years past. The conversation has shifted. It’s now more about virtualization and a cloud infrastructure. And that in itself signals a different perspective. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is still considered a potential solution but is still in many respects not ready for prime time It pairs with the big data issue that has a lot of its roots in the digital transformation the world is going through. There’s just more data of every kind of variety.

But beneath all this is a pressing issue. And that’s storage. It’s becoming a critical problem. Virtualization helps solve some of the pains but the reality is there needs to be a different way.

Yesterday I wrote about the startups in the flash memory storage space. It’s these companies that are causing some disruption. But the established players are right there and will be sure to have something to say about the issue.

So what will be the hot issue? I lean to storage but my gut tells me there will be a lot to discuss at the platform and application layer.

Have any thoughts yourself?