Visiting The Virtual Water Tower

Why does everybody want to hang out at the water tower?  Well, maybe not exactly at the water tower, but near it.

It's because everybody wants to have running water in their homes.  Or as we might call it using the lingo of the industry today WaaS (Water as a Service).  This week Kong and I went to a "famous" water tower to talk about infrastructure in a new So Say SMEs episode.

We don't have anything as good as Kelso falling off the water tower, but around the 7:30 mark in the video Kong gets pretty close.

Competition, Cloud, and The Cowboys at The Palace

There is a big competition going on all over the place.  Kong and I talk about the Cowboys and Seahawks matchup this weekend in the NFL and the new VMware release vs new Microsoft release.  We took So Say SMEs on the road again this week and recorded at a local high school football stadium known as the Palace on Parmer.

So Say SMEs On Location: Dell Diamond

This week we took So Say SMEs on location to the Dell Diamond.
This is the first in a series of remote locations for our little video show. We talked about the big Stuff from VMworld including the disappearance of vRAM licensing and CEO news.


 Watch for the appearance of the FedEx truck.

One Million IOPs From A Single VM

I sometimes get questions from customers or partners about the capabilities of our VMs to be able to handle workloads that have a large amount of disk IO.  Last year we published the results of a 1 million IOPS from a single vSphere 5.0 host.  I talked to Chethan who was involved in that testing in one of the VROOM! Videos earlier this year.  

To further show that high IOPS can be achieved with vSphere we just recently published the results from a new test with a vSphere 5.1 host running a single VM that was able to exceed 1 million IOPS.  There is a short blog on VROOM! with a video that shows IOMeter running during the test and 1 million plus IOPs.

Cool stuff! 

End of vRAM Licensing and Beginning of vCloud Suite - VMworld 2012 Day 1

Short summary of VMworld day one.

We're sorry about that vRAM licensing thing and we are going back to "regular" licensing.  

It is now much easier to and simpler to get and use our products together with vCloud Suite.

VMworld sessions fill up fast, so show up early.  There are a lot of people here.

The social media surrounding the event and embedded into the event continues to get better every year.  The VMworld android app is much better than previous years.  The socialcast VMworld 2012 app is very cool. Tweetups and Tweetvites and the way that events are organized.

Overall, everyone I've talked to has been impressed with new CEO for VMware Pat Gelsinger.  I thought it pretty impressive that after only a few weeks on the job he was able to get up in front of all his new customers and talk about things in fairly compreshensive manner.

Dell and HP Numbers Show Post PC Era Has Begun

The recent quarterly reports from Dell and HP show a sharp decline in the traditional PC business.  This article from Larry Dignan at ZDnet summarizes these results and includes statements from both companies regarding said results.

Dell reported a 22% decline in revenue for it's consumer based PC sales from 3.3 Billion to 2.6 Billion from the same time last year (It's actually worse than this because it achieved a 3.7 billion quarter in between these - which is a drop of over 1 Billion dollars in revenue). Dell explains that they have decided to not participate in the low end of the market - which accounts for some of the drop.

HP reported a 10% decline year over year for it's personal systems group from 9.6 Billion to 8.6 Billion as compared to the same time last year, which is better than Dell in terms of percentage but is still a decline in revenue of a Billion dollars.  The groups and numbers are broken out is a bit different between the two companies - so HP's strictly consumer PC business could be a bit different than these numbers show.

The real reason for these big holes in revenue is the failure of both of these traditional PC companies to successfully move into the post PC era.  Both made attempts at tablets / phones but were unsuccessful.  If those attempts had been successful there would not be nearly such huge holes in their balance sheets.

The Dell Streak and HP TouchPad are the most high profile examples of the product misses by the two companies.  Both companies have recognized that new products are needed and reacted by attempting to create radically different products from their traditional PC business, but have so far failed to execute successfully.

The Post PC Era is here.  If you are only selling traditional PCs you are going to miss out on a large portion of the market.

Apple, Samsung, Motorola (Google), HTC, Asus, and many more smaller companies are rapidly producing new innovative products that are beginning to replace PCs for some people.  The numbers are showing this is happening.  (Especially if you look at Apple's iPad numbers).

Attempting To Be Fully Prepared for VMworld

There are things that you can do to prepare for VMworld:

• Pre-register for the sessions that you are interested in
• Read the press about new products that are going to be announced.  
• Dedicate blocks of time to spend in the Hands on Labs
• Get comfortable shoes
• Pre-register for after hours events
• Join the VMworld Socialcast and get connected 

Kong and I have also talked about preparing for VMworld on the last two episodes of So Say SMEs.

But when the whole things start rolling on Sunday night, and then the conference really officially starts on Monday morning, the best plans only go so far.  So don't get too caught up in planning and just be prepared to go with the flow (which means cram in as many sessions, blogs, tweets, meet-ups, beers, videos, and expo surfing as possible).