InfoWorld Virtualization Executive Forum 2007 Recap

First let me say, for those of you that made it to the forum this year in San Francisco, I hope your time spent at the event was as fun and interesting as mine was. I sincerely had a great time getting the chance to talk and interact with many of you. Hopefully, we’ll get another chance in the future to bump into each other.

Venue

So, what did you guys think of the venue? I found that the Hotel Nikko was a fantastic place to hold the forum. The hotel was absolutely beautiful, and the ballroom and breakout rooms easily accommodated those of us in the audience.

The food was actually pretty good. Unfortunately for one gentleman sitting next to me who was a vegetarian, he seemed to have a slightly difficult time getting his “veggie” plate as the rest of us devoured our chicken meal. Eventually it came, and hopefully he finished it off with one of those good deserts out in the exhibit area.

The Keynotes

Once again, the keynote sessions seemed fairly strong to me.

I enjoyed listening to and watching the presentation from Don Norbeck, Director of Product Development, SunGard Availability Services. His discussion about virtualization as a disruptive technology was spot on – listing best practices for an always available infrastructure.

This was followed up with a really good discussion by Carlos Montero-Luque, Vice President of Product Management, Open Platform Solutions, Novell and Mike Neil, Senior Director of Virtualization Strategy, Windows Server Division, Microsoft. We’ve been watching the partnership between Novell and Microsoft for months now. And this partnership continued to grow on stage as the two discussed their partnership and the joint technical roadmap leading the two companies to support interoperability, offering each other’s operating systems as guest operating systems on each other other’s virtualization platforms, and how the two companies would offer full support for each other’s platforms going forward.

The Sessions

Unlike the event last year in New York, the San Francisco forum was only a one day event. It was difficult to catch all of the sessions and still network with everyone. And yet, with the increased number of attendees, things still seemed to move quickly but remain informative.

As usual, I knew the session on Virtualization Vendor Crossfire would be entertaining and enlightening. Tom Yager hosted Chris Barclay (Virtual Iron), Jack Lo (VMware), Gordon Mangione (XenSource) and Mike Neil (Microsoft) as they discussed the different approaches taken to each of their core technology offerings. This was followed by an excellent discussion about Polyserve’s offering and how it is being used in the real world by companies such as Avanade.

A number of interesting breakout sessions followed that offered something for everyone. The discussions went from storage solutions, to software testing, to desktop virtualization and another on how to wrap things up and put them into production.

For me, the evening was capped off perfectly with Doug Dineley hosting a panel talking about Virtualization Futures: Trends and Forecasts. There was nothing held back in this discussion. I was quite impressed with Scott Jones, Product Manager, Altiris. He is always good for a great discussion.

Perhaps the highlight for me was having a small breakout session with a few people who read or listen to the Virtualization Report. We had a great discussion about virtualization that walked the line from storage, application, and server virtualization and back again. What I liked most was the round table discussion format, free form, and we each just asked one another whatever came to mind. Thank you guys for showing up and participating!

Exhibitors

This year, the number of exhibitors at the show once again proved how much virtualization is expanding and gaining traction in the community, as the number of booths grew to what seemed like at least a 3x multiplier compared with the forum held only a few months ago. The booths were obviously manned by experienced employees of the company, each offering great interaction and conversation about their different offerings.

I was extremely happy to get some hands-on time with the different products. Many of the exhibitors were demonstrating their wares with an actual demo of the product, which really helped me visualize and understand what it was they had to offer. Thanks to vThere, AppStream and Altiris, SWsoft, PlateSpin, and CA for showing me your products.

Thanks to everyone who helped make me feel at home at the show. We have some really great readers and sponsors. I look forward to seeing you all again next time. If you didn’t make it to the forum this time, don’t miss out on the next one!