Get ready for an insightful journey.

Join us at VMware Explore

Las Vegas, Nevada | The Venetian
August 21 – 24, 2023

Over the last five weeks, we have featured perspectives from five esteemed speakers of VMware Explore 2023 Las Vegas. They have graciously agreed to answer the same set of five questions relating to the event, providing intriguing and informative content for our attendees. We are now unveiling the final responses and hope to see you at the highly anticipated Las Vegas event.

Name: Brianna Williams
Title: Senior Product Manager, VMware
Bio: Brianna is a Senior Product Manager for HCX based in D.C. Previously, she was a Senior Cloud Consultant specializing in workload mobility and migration, cloud adoption, and disaster recovery. She enjoys bringing impactful, creative solutions to customers along with being a champion for DEI efforts via Black@VMware. Outside of work, she loves to travel, create ceramic artwork, and take care of her 30+ house plants.

5 Questions

1. Why is attending VMware Explore valuable to VMware customers?

After being virtual for so long, in-person events such as this are so important! This is an opportunity to deepen your knowledge about products you regularly use, but I also challenge you to learn something new during the week. Attend a session about a topic that you haven’t had time to dig into yet, take a Hands on Lab led by an expert — there may be a solution to a problem that you haven’t been able to quite articulate yet.

This event is also a unique opportunity to talk to other customers to share recent challenges and wins so you don’t have to start from scratch to solve a problem. Chatting with like-minded individuals will not only expand your network, but it will allow you to get firsthand feedback on important topics.

2. What innovations are you most looking forward to learning about this year?

I’m excited to attend the session “The Future Is Here: It’s Just Unevenly Distributed – How xLabs Innovates.” They’re covering innovation in major areas of interest to me: machine learning, edge, and sustainability. It’ll be very interesting what their approach is keeping VMware on the forefront of innovation as these topics are becoming more and more relevant.

I’ll also be on the lookout for any AI-related sessions. In my opinion, the technology behind ChatGPT has been one of the quickest technologies to take off, especially because it is relatable to everyday life for so many people even if they don’t have a career in technology. I love when I see the impact VMware technology has an impact on the bigger picture – whether it’s ensuring a hospital can reliably provide X-Rays or that an application is modernized so passports can be renewed digitally.

3. Can you give us a brief description of what your session/sessions will cover at VMware Explore?

VMware HCX+ has been an exciting project in the making for the past few years with the goal of bringing simplicity to the workload mobility and migration experience. We’ll be showcasing an enterprise customer’s use case of doing an on-premise migration to support their ever-growing footprint. We’re doing this migration with minimal downtime to production workloads and during carefully planned maintenance windows. Without this solution, their vCenter would continue to be over-subscribed and they would need to incur around 9 hours of downtime to move their workloads.

VMware HCX+ will be enabling customers to seamlessly move their VMs between on-premise and VMC on AWS. It’s a truly multi-cloud solution that will enable customers to have the flexibility of moving back and forth environments based on their business needs.

4. What is something you think someone new to VMware Explore should know before going to the event?

This week is going to be busy like nothing you’ve experienced before. There’s events and sessions to attend, people to meet, new topics to learn – it can feel overwhelming. Be sure to take time at the end of the day to digest everything and stay hydrated!

One great thing you’ll be able to do is meet VMware product owners (such as myself) – don’t be shy, we love hearing feedback from customers! At the end of the day, we want to curate the best experience that is solving your day-to-day challenges.

5. What do you gain, as a speaker, from attending VMware Explore?

As a speaker, I get the opportunity to push myself out of my comfort zone. Presenting at VMware Explore challenges me to tell a concise, compelling story that people will want to listen to. My goal is to tell the story about a project that my HCX team and I have been working on for the past two years resonates with the audience.

In a broader sense, I also get the chance to represent as a black woman in technology making an impact. Hopefully, when people see me presenting, it will encourage them to submit a paper for next year to tell their story as well.

Gain valuable insights that could impact the trajectory of your organization.

Don’t wait another minute! Register now for VMware Explore 2023 Las Vegas so that you can maximize value for your business and learn from industry-leading experts in one convenient location.