As has been the case for the last two years, my first twodays of this VMWorld were spent in the Partner Technical Advisory Board. This board is made up of the top engineersand architects of the top 1% of all VMware North America partners, butrepresent almost 50% of all the revenue brought to VMware from its NorthAmerican partners. Needless to say, it’sa great group to be a part of, and it has been my honor to sit on this board forthe fourth time.
The first day (Sunday) was desktop based. Unfortunately, pretty much all of theinformation presented was repeat from back in February when PTAB last met atPartner Exchange. It was kicked off byVittorio Viarengo, VMware VP of Desktop Product Management. He explained that the delay in deliveringView 4.5 was purely about the quality of the product, as well as covering someof the new features. He also stated thatthere will be a stronger emphasis on assessments prior to the proof of conceptfor VDI deployments. The rest of thespeakers proceeded to dig deeper into the View 4.5 features and a fewconversations about features in future releases, including a look into the EndUser Computing and Project Horizon concepts that are being introduced this yearat VMWorld.
Carl Eschenbach, VMware’s EVP of Worldwide Sales, stopped byto greet us, and ended up staying for nearly 45 minutes. It was a great discussion that helped todefine how VMware’s partners need to adjust our business models to incorporatethe introduction of the cloud.
The second day (Monday) was cloud based. The discussions on this day were farbetter. We received a lot of futures,and it seemed that the product managers were definitely listening to ourinput. The highlight was an “imagine yourselftwo years in the future” discussion of SRM features that really showed thevalue of PTAB for both the members and VMware. There was also a live demonstration of vCloud Director by Eddie Dinel(who also did the keynote demonstration).
Definitely a great start to VMWorld. The only major issue was the fact thatVMWorld included sessions and labs on Monday, which resulted in the PTABmembers missing an entire day of conference goodness.