Alright, Day 2 General Session Time!  They hinted at a big announcement, so let’s see what they got for today!

• Michael Dell and Pat Gelsinger start off with a “fireside chat” to answer submitted questions by attendees.
• Acknowledged disappointing customer satisfaction for support.
• Skyline from VMware for proactive support coming.
• New AI and machine learning along with quantum computing are creating a new human-machine interactive atmosphere that isn’t just IT focused.  It also will involve C level executives to be successful.
• Everyone needs to integrate machine learning and AI into their product.
• The next 30 years are going to make the previous 30 years look boring.
• Today in tech will be the slowest tech day for the rest of your life.
• Reinforced VMware as an open ecosystem for competition, not VMware as some kind of subsidiary of DellEMC.  “If it’s good for VMware, it’s good for Dell.”  The ecosystem is growing, which I actually agree.
• Pivotal – Cloud Foundry is used in over 50% of Fortune 500 companies.
• Pivotal Container Services announced, which will include Kubernetes and NSX.
• Google Cloud Services will be in all Kubernetes containers.
• Demo of AppDefense looks good.  Checksums of app files, identification of normal behaviors, notifications, remediation behaviors.
• Elastic DRS – add more hosts in AWS when running out of capacity.
• Integration with AWS into vCenter, capacity will be reflected even down to vRealize Operations Manager.
• Network Insight can identify good candidates for migrations into AWS.
• vRealize Automation can then migrate the workload.
• That’s A LOT of products from VMware to all this though, but cool nonetheless.
• NSX Cloud to hacwe consistent security and consumption across multiple clubs.
• Wavefront is SaaS is application monitoring and analysis.
• Wrkspace ONE Intelligence takes that analysis “the last mile”.
• VMware Pulse IoT Center is a family of IoT solutions.  This is more of a future product.

VMworld 2017 in sunny and RIDICULOUSLY HOT Las Vegas has begun!

Seriously, it’s really hot out here, with temperature highs the next three days at 107F!  Thankfully, VMworld is an indoor affair.

Here’s a recap of the opening general session.

• Science fiction is becoming science fact
• The biggest change today is our expectations
• We get bored with newer innovations faster
• Many industries have not digitally transformed.  Retail is only 10% digital as an example.
• VMware’s goal is still to give access to applications on any device, anywhere
• Workspace ONE aimed to be consumer simple, but enterprise secure
• Airwatch is now working closely with HP device-as-a-service offering
• Capital One sees themselves “as a technology company that happens to provide financial services”
• VMware wants to make the cloud easier and seamless
• VMware Cloud Foundation 2.0 to be released
• vSAN is now at 10,000 customers
• DellEMC is releasing VXRACK.
• Run any application in vSphere and move it to AWS, and manage it through VMware.
• Medtronic changed philosophies from being a device company to being a services company.
• Medtronic – “Going into the public cloud is… going into it for the long haul…  There will be good days and bad days.”  Very much worth it though for their goals.
• NSX is what ESX was for VMware’s first 20 years for its next decade.
• Sysco uses NSX for microsegmentation for even their most sensitive workloads.
• Sysco’s CIO was able to build a web server in AWS using VMware’s management software in a virtual data center there in under 4 hours between other tasks.
• Over $100,000,000,000 is spent on security.
• The IT industry has failed on security.  It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up using technologies like NSX.
• We must also go back to the basics with simple principles – least privilege, microsegmentation, encryption, multi factor authentication, and patching.
• VMware helping with federal legislation to improve cyber security.
• We need to ensure good, not chase the bad for better security.
• VMware Appdefense – machine learning to detect when things deviate from good, and automate response.
• IBM Watson will be used in a partnership with VMware Appdefense for analysis and action.
• Good to see American Red Cross and discussions about the devastation of Hurricane Harvey to raise awareness.
• CIO top spending priorities — Cloud, mobile, security