Day at VMworld, today was going the be the first of 2 EVO:RAIL sessions for me… but before we get there first the keynote. The keynote was great in my opinion. It felt a bit more loosened up than last year and it looked like they were having fun up on stage and that seemed to resonate well with the crowd. There were a couple of things which stood out to me: CloudVolumes, Project Fargo (VMFork), EVO:RAIL and of course the awesome integration of vCAC an NSX / VVOL / VSAN.
After the keynote I had to go straight to my session on EVO:RAIL. I presented with Dave Shanley, the lead engineer, and the room was packed. This session was a repeat which unfortunately ended up being scheduled in a room which was way too small. They managed though to let 50 extra people in, standing room only! However, there were still people waiting in the hallway all the way too the end and around the corner. I hope that those who did not get in will be able to make the session today in Salon 7 in the Marriott at 11:30 as it fits way more people. It was a good session in my opinion and we received some excellent feedback. The best feedback came from two of our direct competitors who both acknowledged they loved the user experience and the simplicity that EVO:RAIL offers.
After my session I went straight to the EVO ZONE. Wow, that place is packed every minute of the day, and when I say packed I mean packed. Great interest from customers and partners around what it is, what it does, and how they can buy one. Some awesome conversations with a customer who had a use case for ROBO deployments, 1500 sites, he said: No longer will I need skilled IT people to manage those site because of the simplicity of this interface but also the deployment mechanism. You inject a “JSON files” with all configuration attributes and then click “just go” and you are done in minutes.
At the end of my booth visit I walked around the solutions exchange and met a lot of great folks. After that it was time for the Office of CTO party. It was great to see a lot of people at the party I had not seen at the event yet. It was definitely a well organized event, with great food, music and people.
