So many blog posts this week, but I had some thoughts I needed to get out. VMworld 2015 is in the books and it was fun but how much was really announced and what makes sense?

Let’s start at the top, there were a lot of announcements but none more misunderstood than the first days. VMware announced Photon and their Container solution. The second seems like a stab at trying to remain relevant with the current IT trends. Most likely that is what it is, as I have discussed before containers are an application deployment methodology that doesn’t solve a problem rather re-hash previous solutions to the same issue of application management. But Photon I think was overlooked as how big of a deal it really is.

Photon means that VMware will have a lightweight VM kernel to quickly deploy applications on top of vSphere directly. This is different than containers; this is changing to a unikernel approach. It means that VMware realizes that we no longer need to continue the path of managing operating systems, runtime environments, and all the layers that come in between. Unikernels may very well be the future of how we deploy apps. But we will table this for another conversation.

What else was announced? Lets see EVO: SDDC I have no words for this yet, it seems interesting a Hyper Converged vRA platform based on EVO. Could be cool let’s see what becomes of this.

Partnerships with Microsoft on the EUC front, makes a lot of sense. This will open the doors for AirWatch and AppVolumes to provision applications for users on physical and virtual desktops as well as mobile devices. Pretty slick.

Oh and Cross-cloud migration which I was jokingly calling Criss-Cross Cloud Sauce.

This one got so much hate on twitter, because it doesn’t support non-VMware cloud environments. Yes this stinks but who is to blame? Is it VMware’s fault for not better positioning vSphere as the infrastructure hypervisor of choice for AWS, Azure and the like? Sure maybe although as we have learned through mapping as a thing matures the likelihood of competition through the maturation process to commoditization breeds divergence from the original market leader.

Is it the fault of us all not demanding a standardized interface and API set for all clouds to be built to? Again we need to look at the maturation process, has cloud adoption gained enough leverage that the consumer base can better dictate the standards of the utility? Eh most likely not, although we can vote with our dollars, we don’t yet see the vast majority shifting the needs and standards practice of cloud … yet. I think this comes soon though, as more cloud providers continue to shift to meet mandates and security compliances the market will force the providers to begin to standardize practices. It’s happening in small ways today. Long-term niche markets will continue, but the vast majority of cloud will have the ability to leverage a unikernel approach to deployment. This will come either through the adoption of a Cloud Foundry like PaaS solution for all app deployments, or through native applications kernelization (new word!) . But either way if we utilitize the deployment of applications we must standardize the platform on which we deploy (that’s actually part of the value prop for Cloud Foundry or any PaaS).

Security and DevOps were both big topics at VMworld this year, new version and product releases be damned these topics were what excited me. Most likely because they are some of my main focuses. What got your engine running?

Lastly thank you to all who attended my session with Travis Howerton all 103 of you so surprised at that level of attendance for a Federal session.