Cloud providers and software developers scraping their hides on the cutting edge can lose sight of what life is like for regular end users. Are enterprise information technology practitioners ready for the cloud-native-open-source-serverless-tron?

“We get inundated with marketing — ‘go to the cloud; go to the cloud,’” said Chris Harney (pictured), founder and president of VTUG LLC, a virtualization technology user group.

On the ground at the VTUG Winter Warmer in Foxborough, Massachusetts, attendees are responding to the new tech hustle by saying, “Hold your horses.” The cloud versus on-premises virtualization debate is lively among attendees this year, according to Harney.

“And they’re realizing that everyone is pretty much in the same boat together,” Harney told Stu Miniman (@stu), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio.

The more things change …

Aboard that boat are measured decisions about hybrid cloud and lots of VMware Inc. virtual machines to go around, Harney pointed out. Looking ahead, users see VMware’s NSX virtualized networking as an enticing destination. Largely missing in action is open-source darling Kubernetes container orchestration management platform.

“This audience may have heard of Kubernetes; very few people are implementing it,” Harney said.

That said, the attendees are not ostriches — they know the pace of change is more rapid than ever; and ignoring it could cost them a competitive advantage. “Moore’s law’s gone out the window. Change is happening in weeks rather than years,” Harney added.

Yet, there remain some constants. “We all have end users. We want applications delivered without hesitation or without issues. So that’ll always be the same,” Harney said. “What’s changed is, how do we deliver that?”

The trend is moving from virtualization to automation, according to Harney. “But I think security’s starting to take a forefront to that,” he said, pointing to Intel Corp.’s recent security snafus.

”I think a lot more people are spending a lot more time remediating possible issues and less time building new stuff,” Harney concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer.

Photo: SiliconANGLE