Author: Ed Hoppitt
I’m heading into my seventh year presenting at VMworld, and it’s hard to believe that this is the event’s 10-year anniversary. I’ve been with VMware for a year now, with over 14 years in the IT service industry, and VMworld gets more exciting every year. This year VMware will show attendees how to extend the benefits of virtualization to all data center services—and I can tell you that those that I’m working with love the idea of moving away from their legacy data center architectures towards the software-defined data center.
If you’ve already registered to come and find out how to accelerate the agility, reliability, and savings that you can get from evolving to the software-defined data center then welcome on board. If you haven’t already registered, there’s still time. Along with me, there are several other Accelerate consultants who’ll be presenting. Below are abstracts with links to their sessions and panels so you can easily add them to your VMworld Schedule Builder, which is now available to help you plan your time effectively.
You will also find us in the VMworld demo grounds, where we’ll have an Accelerate booth staffed with consultants who will demonstrate how data center virtualization examines much more than just the traditional view of server virtualization.
Can’t wait to catch up with you in San Francisco—make sure you come say hi !
Ed
Ed Hoppitt is an Accelerate business solutions architect based in the U.K.
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Ed Hoppitt, VMware Accelerate Business Solutions Architect with Phil Richards, CTO Global Markets , BT Plc
OPT4689 – Operations Transformation – Expanding the Value of Cloud Computing — Cloud computing is a forcing function for change. It is helping IT organizations move away from focusing on siloed technology challenges, towards driving business transformation through IT agility. But that change is also transforming the way IT approaches Service Operations Management. In this session, consulting professionals from VMware and BT Global Services will share real world transformation stories about a range of customer engagements, as well as BT’s own vCloud deployment on multiple vBlocks. Learn key insights and lessons learned to optimize cloud era operations. Also avoid common mistakes and stumbling blocks. And, understand how to determine if you’re at risk for an “All the gear, no idea” cloud strategy.
Eric Ledyard, VMware Accelerate Chief Technologist
VSVC4509 – SDDC is Here and Now: A Success Story — We partnered with one of the largest financial companies in the world to design an actionable plan around SDDC and study whether or not it was feasible in 2013, what the impact would be to the existing organization, and what the value would be of moving forward with an infrastructure built on a SDDC architecture. Coming out of this, we have an incredible success story for them and have proven the feasibility and tremendous value that SDDC brings to one of the toughest companies in the world.
Rich Pleasants, VMware Accelerate Architect with Rich Bourdeau, VMware Group Marketing Manager
OPT5474 – The Transformative Power and Business Case for Cloud Automation — While the cost savings of virtualization are substantial and undeniable, the savings and service delivery improvements of deploying on-demand self service and scalability in a private or hybrid cloud environment are also compelling. But all three require automation to deliver full opex and agility value potential. But what do we mean by automation? Scripting, workflow, and orchestration are all types of automation. Some are a better fit than other for specific use cases. And each have different short term and long term costs and benefits. If you’re like most companies, you may struggle to develop a cogent automation strategy that quantifies costs and benefits with your cloud deployment project. Attend this session to understand the terminology and the key success factors behind the concepts. Well explore different types of automation and look at specific use cases that are a great fit for each. And we will also offer proven approaches for articulating the value of IT automation in terms of operational efficiency and resource utilization savings, improved service quality, and increased agility and responsive to business needs.
Rich Pleasants and Heman Smith, VMware Accelerate Architects with Paul Chapman, VMware VP of Information Technology; Kevin Lees, VMware Principal Architect; and Jeffrey Ton, SVP Corporate Connectivity & CIO, Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana
OPT5315 – Transform IT Into a Service Broker – Key Success Factors — The IT service broker concept is compelling. IT takes a portfolio view of workloads and capabilities, and brokers the right “fit for purpose” solution for each service. IT may move applications to SaaS, build and deliver services on-premise, or subcontract depending on circumstance. But it takes more than a “cloud” or fielding a new team, or re-organizing the department to change long standing service delivery and service consumption behaviors. This panel is packed with those who have “been there done that” and understand the challenges, tricks, and benefits of the service broker model. We’ll draw on the real world experience of the panelists and the audience to help you identify and apply the secrets of successful transformation.
Craig Stanley, VMware Accelerate Analytics Consultant
PHC7117 – Using The Cloud Compass to Evaluate Technology Risk in Cloud Decisions — Public and hybrid clouds offer enterprises significant opportunities in terms of cost efficiency, better reliability and improved business agility. Cloud solution deployments vary based on the workloads, cost to deploy and run, and impact to the business. While the implementation and operating costs of cloud migration are important, the business impact may be even more important to understand from the perspective of risk, return and other factors that could complicate your cloud implementation. See a live demonstration of the The Cloud Compass — an automated process for evaluating these difficult-to-quantify risk and return factors. It illustrates how risk impacts the public/hybrid cloud TCO, generates a return on risk and enables the enterprise to make decisions based on intangible but real observations.
Padmaja Vrudhula, VMware Accelerate Strategist with Thirumalesh Reddy, VMware Sr. Director of Emerging Solutions & Innovation
VSVC4948 – Moving Enterprise Application Dev/Test to VMware’s internal Private Cloud – Architecture, Implementation and Integration — The VMware IT team responsible for managing enterprise applications is moving all dev/test environments to our private cloud IaaS. We have achieved impressive cycle time and cost reduction. This technical session is presented by VMware Director of IT responsible for automating deployment and testing of complex multi-application dev/test environments in a vCloud environment. To improve agility, SDLC throughput, and reduce costs, we have automated deployment of more than a dozen standard dev/test instances including provisioning and testing combinations of dozens of different application and middleware components. In this session, we will highlight an automation platform we developed to deploy complex application stacks into a vCloud environment. We will share architecture and implementation lessons learn and real bottom line benefits that result our internal use of a range of VMware products including vCloud virtualized infrastructure, building blueprints using App Director, self-service catalog and policy management using vCAC, policy-based tiered infrastructure resource management, provisioning with integrated monitoring and analytics, and provisioning and de-provisioning based on a leased resource model. Attend this session to hear lessons learned and gain insights from an expert with both product and architecture expertise.
