Started Tuesday with the Maritz/Herrod keynote.  I have to say that this was probably the best keynote I’ve seen at any of the VMWorlds. The message was relatively clear, they transitioned well from one topic to another and stuck with a common theme through all three speakers.

It started with a short video “explaining” the concept of the cloud.  Extremely well done with references to Microsoft (“As we contemplate the azure skys”), pizza parlor analogies (order what you want from a list of options and someone delivers it completed to you) and many references to the Matrix (the cloud exists in our collective consciousness).

The statistics of VMWorld attendance were astounding.  VMWorld started in 2004 with 1400 attendees; 2009 had 12,500; and this year they had over 17,000 attendees (their original goal was for 14,000).  I have heard this is makes VMWorld the second largest tech conference to Oracle.  Out of these 17,000 people, only 55 have been to all seven VMWorld conferences (I am lucky to be one of them).

There was a great call out to the VMUG organization and the new board of directors.  I know many of the folks on the board of directors, and I think they’ll do a great job with the new structure for the VMUGs.

The journey to the cloud message then began.  The following were a few of the interesting statistics they used:

• 2009 VM Cross over: more VMs than physical machines
• 10 million VMs will be deployed in 2010
• 190,000 VMware customers
•  50,000 VCPs
• 25,000 partners
• There are now more copies of Operating systems that no longer see the hardware than ever before.

One of the interesting things I noticed was that in one slide, security was added to the core resources, sitting equal to CPU, Memory and Storage.

The three layers VMware is focusing are:

• Decrease OpEx, focus on innovation in the compute layer (layer 1)
• “Are old apps on new infrastructure enough?” which indicates that new application platforms are needed, resulting in a reduction of the current operating systems to just app platforms on the hypervisor, which runs the hardware. (layer 2)
• End user computing will include multiple devices that all need access and management and a consistent user experience (layer 3)

Steve Herrod, VMware’s CTO, then took over the stage and discussed several aspects of the cloud and how VMware is enabling it.  He pointed out that small customers can push the cost of virtual machines to just $18 using average consolidation on 6 cores using the vSphere Essentials bundle.

There were also the following announcements:

• Acquisition of Integrien – a proactive analytics engine presented with a dashboard interface
• vCloud Director – http://www.vmware.com/products/vcloud-director/
• vShield Endpoint – http://www.vmware.com/products/vshield-endpoint/
• vSheild App – http://www.vmware.com/products/vshield-app/
• vShield Edge – http://www.vmware.com/products/vshield-edge/
• vFabric – frameworks for directly taking full advantage of the cloud infrastructure
• Tricypher acquisition – provides single sign-on capabilities for Horizon

Demos were performed of vCloud Director and Horizon (complete with scooters!).

View 4.5 was officially announced, with full Windows 7 support, offline mode support, a native Mac client, and support for vSphere 4.1.  View 4.5 will also work with vShield Endpointfor offloading AV processing.  They are also publishing a reference architecture to push down the acquisition costs below $500.

After the keynote, I wasn’t feeling too well (cold, not alcohol related), so I returned to the hotel to try and get some rest.  After resting I headed to the VMworld Labs.  The setup this year for the labs was absolutely amazing!  I completed two labs and was thoroughly impressed by the performance and the ease of use.  Kudos to everyone who put these labs together.