SiliconANGLE and Wikibon will bring theCUBE to VMworld 2014 in San Francisco beginning today for what promises to be one of the most exciting lineups of interviews in the mobile video studio’s five-year history.

TheCUBE be stream its coverage of the trends reshaping IT beginning today at today at 10:30 a.m. PT and continuing through Wednesday. In addition to interviewing top VMware executives, hosts will also speak with key rivalslike Docker, Inc. (formerly dotCloud) and Cisco Systems, Inc., as well as startups like DataGravity and executives from four major venture capital (VC) companies.

Wikibon.org Principal Research Contributor Stuart Miniman attendance is expected to meet or exceed the 22,000 people who flooded the show last year, and “many more wish they were there.” For them, there’s theCUBE.

Watch three days of coverage of VMworld 2014 starting Monday at 10:40 a.m. PT on TheCUBE here. Join the conversation about the conference and interviews on theCUBE on CrowdChat. 

Docker CEO Ben Golub will be on theCUBE at noon PT today to talk about his red-hot company, which many people see as a threat to VMware. Docker  has turned virtualization upside down with its Linux container technology. Instead of focusing on virtualizing servers, it basically virtualizes applications, allowing them to run across servers in a standard Linux environment. Red Hat has built Docker support into the latest version of its Linux, and at DockerCon 2014 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Azure would incorporate Docker in its technology. The Microsoft endorsement is important, since VMware environments are mostly on Windows, while Docker so far has focused on Linux. In his appearance on theCUBE, expect Golub to answer questions about Docker’s relationship with VMware as well as Docker’s immediate plans.

Paula Long, CEO and co-founder of DataGravity, Inc. is another in a lineup of executives from interesting startups who are scheduled to appear on theCUBE. In her interview at 11:00 she’ll discuss why data-aware storage and the next big thing. Andy Warfield, CTO and co-founder of startup Coho Data, and one of the original authors of the Xen hypervisor, will also be on theCUBE early Monday, where he is expected to answer questions about whether hypervisors have become commoditized and whether open source hypervisors are infiltrating the traditional enterprise marketplace.

If you want to know where the smart money is going, executives from several venture capital companies are slated for appearances. Tuesday will kick off with Jerry Chen, partner at Greylock Partners,  and Pete Sonsini, general partner at global venture capital firm NES. Steve Herrod, partner in General Catalyst Partners will be on theCUBE Tuesday afternoon. They will be followed on Wednesday by Frank Artale, managing partner of boutique venture capital company Ignition Partners. All will answer questions about what new disruptive technologies are on the horizon.

Software defined infrastructure

Top VMware executives also are scheduled to appear on theCUBE, starting with VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger on Monday afternoon, president and COO and Carl Eschenbach and John Gilmartin, GM and VP of the Software Defined Data Center Suite Business Unit on Tuesday afternoon. Rounding out Wednesday’s lineup will be  Chris Wolf, Americas CTO for VMware, Bill Fathers, EVM and general manager of the Hybrid Cloud Business Unit and Martin Casado, CTO and Fellow, SVP of Networking and Security Business Unit, and a co-founder of Nicira.

VMware’s competition will also be there. Cisco Systems Inc., whose Application Virtual Switch is the main competition for NSX, has agreed to interviews with Howie Xu, senior director of engineering for the Cloud Networking and Services Group and Balaji Sivasubramanian, director of  product management, at  will be on TheCUBE early this afternoon.

VMware’s 2012 purchase of Nicira and its NSX large-scale data network virtualization technology shocked the industry. The move anchored a major VMware initiative in software-led networking based on NSX and large scale data networks with vSAN,which Wikibon analyst David Floyer has named “Server SAN,” and which replaces direct-attached storage (DASD) in a virtualized environment. Both seem to be doing well in the market according to Wikibon CEO David Vellante and Miniman, who discussed them in their VMware preview webcast on theCUBE (embedded below).

Overall, this promises to be one of the most exciting conferences in theCUBE’s history.

Image courtesy Wikibon.org

Image Courtesy VMware, Inc.