We’ve been holding a great series of day-long seminars all over the world this year called the VMware Virtualization Forums. (Most of the US ones have finished for the year, but they are still going on worldwide.) They are a great way of getting up to speed on VMware and the virtualization ecosystem, talk to existing customers, and meet your peers. Some have called them "mini-VMworlds," and I’ve seen very positive feedback on the value you get — we try hard not to make it just a sales pitch.
Richard Garsthagen, who blogs over at run-virtual.com, gave the VMware overview at the Swedish Virtualization Forum entitled "VMware Vision and Future Direction". Even if you’ve been following along since the beginning, it’s a good review of where we are now and how to explain virtualization to someone who may still think it’s too complicated or too overhyped or just about server consolidation. It also talks about the forward-looking technologies we talked about at VMworld, if you want a second look.
I’ve been here for a few years now, and I tend to fall back on explaining virtualization from the basis of the technology stack. What I liked about this presentation is that instead of that standard explanation, it talks about how people have used virtualization to get to virtual infrastructure very quickly and goes from there. Recommended, even for us old-timers.
