Wednesday was still a day of recovery, but I did manage to do some deep diving into VMware’s vCloud Director through a couple of meeting with VMware folks.  Much of the conversations were NDA, so I’m not going to cover them extensively.  One item we did discuss was that the product is not necessarily aimed at the traditional end users.  The product’s end user interface is primarily designed for technically-savvy people, people who understand servers already.  This seems to be a common misperception as people consider its use cases.   There is still much work to be accomplished before it can be completely self-service to the traditional end users.

I also had a short conversation and demo covering HP’s Insight Orchestration product.  This tool is a process flow orchestration engine that includes a drag and drop interface and many preprogrammed workflows.  It was a very impressive application, one that can interface into many different physical and virtual systems.

I then jumped into the Labs again to complete a lab on vCloud Orchestrator.  It was my first hands-on time with the product and I was quite impressed.  For a 1.0 release, it was very polished and seemed to be very well laid out.  This is most likely due to the extensive and long-term beta period the product experienced.  It’s not perfect by any means, but it is a MASSIVE product so we can’t expect everything to be in 1.0.

Before hitting the VMWorld party, I joined the other approximately 150 vExperts attending VMWorld at a reception put on by VMware’s Office of the CTO.  The party was simply awesome and included many of VMware’s Product Engineers.  It was a perfect opportunity to rub elbows (and share drinks) with the other vExperts and VMware employees who actually affect the products VMware provides.