Five things we learned at VMworld 2019
From its new Partner Connect programme to its all-or-nothing approach to Kubernetes, CRN casts its eye over the litany of news from this year's VMware event in Barcelona
VMware announced a host of updates and changes to its products and offerings at its annual VMworld Europe event in Barcelona this year.
A good number of those announcements were add-ons to what originally had been announced at the US edition of the event in August, but execs went to great pains to emphasise how the firm is integrating its coterie of new acquisitions, including its two big purchases this year, Carbon Black and Pivotal.
CRN picks out the five key takeaways for partners from the vendor's "biggest event yet".
Why VMware is going big on Kubernetes
CEO Pat Gelsinger's opening keynote centred on Kubernetes technology.
VMware's purchase of Kubernetes specialist Heptio was somewhat overshadowed last year by IBM's purchase of Red Hat, but its acquisition of Pivotal software was deemed to be a companion piece in the vendor's charge forward with Kubernetes.
During a press conference, Gelsinger expounded on the rationale of why Kubernetes is becoming so integral to its operations, stating that its decision is based on industry consensus, adding that a "fine balance" has to be struck when guiding emerging technologies to market.
"I have personally been associated with most of the PC standards; I helped create USB, I helped create WiFi. So I know it's a careful balance of industry engagement and support, along with the commercialisation, interest and open source community engagement," he stated.
"What we saw in Kubernetes and Heptio was that these guys get it, the community gets it. Part of our commitment and the Heptio acquisition is that we are going to be good curators and good citizens of the Kubernetes nativisation process for the industry.
"It will be open source, upstream compatible, and we will be driving that community forward to a good and appropriate way for a standard to emerge.
"Most of them failed; they did not gain industry consensus and relevance over the long term. So we're betting heavily with this one that it will be one of those going forward."
Channel changes
The rash of announcements at VMworld were mainly around technical aspects and COO Sanjay Poonen seemed a bit flustered when fielding a question during a press conference about how VMware plans to help partners understand the numerous updates and refreshes to its products.
"We have 75,000 partners and even with acquisitions we seek to acquire companies that are partner-friendly," he explained.
"The core fabric of VMware is a partner-friendly company; we drive a significant part of our business through the channel, even though we're segmented into enterprise and commercial.
"In this particular area, the partners want us to simplify our brand of companies and products - Heptio, Pivotal and Carbon Black.
"Part of the reason for simplifying everything with [Kubernetes programme] Project Tanzu is that you go forth not with three separate companies now, but with a unified brand around [our vision of] ‘build, run and manage' potential."
At a press roundtable the following day, global channel chief Jenni Flinders was in a better position to explain the vendor's new partner strategy and how the product updates play into its new Master Services competencies for partners.
The new Partner Connect programme is due to come into effect on 29 February next year and Flinders was rapturous in explaining the benefits and flexibility it will bring to the channel.
Flinders was rapturous about how the new programme will cater to all partners, regardless of what their business model looks like, calling the existing programme "antiquated".
"When we looked at the customer journey and we looked at how our portfolio expanded, we said ‘We're bringing to market a single programme, one agreement - irrespective of your business model'," she told the press.
"So we take all that antiquated nomenclature and throw it out the door and we will engage with you based on your business model."
Relationships with public cloud vendors
Considering Oracle is the most recent public cloud provider to partner with VMware, it was somewhat surprising how little was made of the team-up during the event, especially as Gelsinger gave shout-outs to developing its relationships with AWS and Azure.
Alanzo Blackstock, director of VMware's UK and Ireland organisation, told CRN that too much shouldn't be read into this, rather that the focus on expanding its relationship with the two biggest cloud providers is indicative of the market.
"Oracle is a really good addition to the portfolio and demonstrates the fact that whatever cloud path you choose, you can have consistent infrastructure operations," he said.
"I think it's probably just more reflective of the cloud market in terms of where the bigger players are at the moment."
The new VMware Cloud Director service allows MSPs of VMware on AWS to provide multi-tenant capabilities that allow them to share VMware Cloud on AWS instances, and the overall costs across multiple tenants.
The vendor called out a slew of updates on its blossoming relationship with Microsoft, which was announced earlier this year at Dell Technologies World.
These updates include a combined solution involving its own Workspace ONE with Microsoft Endpoint Manager that aims to accelerate Windows 10 modern management, global expansion of Azure VMware solutions hybrid cloud service and deeper integration of its SD-WAN offering into Azure.
The expanded partnerships with AWS and Microsoft allow partners to delve further into the cloud journey along with their customers, Blackstock added.
"We see that our customers want cloud-like services in their own datacentres, so they want the same performance and agility of cloud, but sometimes they need to stay in their datacentre and not on a public cloud," he elaborated.
"Their customers are asking them to help them with that cloud journey which isn't just about moving sets of data to the cloud, it also needs to have cloud-like infrastructures on-prem.
"I've seen more of our traditional partners move very quickly into the space. Certainly, over the last few years, they're much more excited about the opportunities to help customers with that journey than they ever have been."
Five things we learned at VMworld 2019
From its new Partner Connect programme to its all-or-nothing approach to Kubernetes, CRN casts its eye over the litany of news from this year's VMware event in Barcelona
Dell isn't playing favourite with its choice of security
The Carbon Black acquisition seemed to be on the tip of every VMware exec's tongue.
COO Sanjay Poonen trotted out the company's stance that the security industry is "fundamentally broken" which was part of the reasoning behind the Carbon Black purchase, which closed last month.
The event also saw the announcement that VMware's parent company Dell has made Carbon Black its end-point security specialist of choice, which Poonen called a "game-changer" move for VMware's security posture.
Some might consider this a no-brainer move, seeing as Carbon Black is now a part of the Dell family.
However, Nick McAlister, senior director of EMEA channels, distribution and go-to-market at VMware, insisted to CRN that the announcement is still a big deal for VMware, as it prides itself on remaining relatively independent from its parent.
"If you look at our relationship with Dell, we're still independent, we still have a vibrant and healthy ecosystem with a lot of other manufacturers such as Lenovo, HP and Fujitsu," he said.
"Ultimately, we have a choice model, but we are closely aligned to Dell obviously, and they're basically taking our best-of-breed technologies and integrating them into their solutions where we get solutions like VXrail and hyperconverged infrastructure.
"As we acquire they'll be looking at those technologies and saying ‘Actually, this is fit for our strategy as well'.
"I see them as just leveraging the strengths of VMware, but at the same time VMware is also being true to its roots and being as independent as much as we can be."
Shaping tech to be used for good
As the conversation around sustainability and eco-awareness filters through to the channel, VMware took the opportunity to add its voice to the throng.
EMEA channel boss Jean-Philippe Barleaza told the press that the company had implemented a carbon footprint meter which will allow customers to gauge their datacentre energy consumption.
"Our customers can measure the carbon footprint and the energy usage that they have in the datacentres," he explained.
"That comes together with our desire to deliver technology and ease of doing business with a way to contribute to a better world. By giving the chance to our customers to manage and operate their infrastructure in such a way, they can do so as well."
This echoed Gelsinger's comments during his keynote which pondered whether technology is fundamentally a tool for good or for bad. He ultimately decided on it being neither, rather that it reflects the behaviour of the humans using it.
"Technology is amplifying human behaviour in powerful ways, but we also believe that, fundamentally, technology is neither good nor bad - it's neutral," he preached to the thousands in the audience.
"It's up to us to shape technology as a force for good and as technologists, we can't afford to think that this is somebody else's problem."
On this note, Bitcoin came in for a pummeling from the chief exec, who criticised it for enabling crypto crime at scale and for being badly engineered.
"We're investing heavily in making distributed ledger technology successful, but we believe it needs to be engineered for good and good engineering," he said.
"And both of these need to come together because 95 per cent of Bitcoin today is illicit uses, and a single transaction consumes enough energy to power your house for almost a day.
"It is neither engineered for good nor is it good engineering and we believe that we need to be a force driving technology for good."