VMware “Day 0” identifies what’s hot in virtualization in 2012

VMworld “day 0” was really just a precursor to what we’ll be seeing for the rest of the week.  Today, there were no major sessions, but attendees were treated to the early opening of the exhibit floor where vendors galore have gathered to hawk their wares.

As the biggest VMworld yet, it’s not a surprise that the show floor is a lively place with an impressive cross section of the virtualization market.  In walking around the floor and getting an idea for who has set up shop, there are some clear trends that are really big this year:

  • Solid state storage.  It seems like every other booth is a vendor selling solid state storage hardware of some kind.  Vendors include Tegile, Pure Systems, Tintri, EMC, Dell, Nimbus Data, Nimble and many, many others.  It’s absolutely clear that inclusion of solid state in storage is the future of storage and we’re seeing a number of players lining up to capitalize on this revolution.
  • Management and monitoring tools.  With tight budgets and a need to demonstrate good ROI and low TCO, organizations are forced to maximize as fully as possible their investments in IT infrastructure. In looking at the show floor, there are a number of vendors selling solutions intended to address storage performance management issues, VMware performance monitoring and other needs.
  • VDI. Although virtual desktops have been discussed, dissected and debated for a number of years, there are vendors galore on the trade show floor that are hoping to capitalize on the promises of desktop virtualization.

It’s crystal clear that virtualization remains a top priority for many organizations and that the vendor space also has high hopes, as evidenced by the sheer number of companies on the show floor.

More to come during the week!

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