Taking a break with VMware Take-3

Over the past 6 years, my focus has very much been VMware vSAN. I started focussing on vSAN when we internally started working on Project Marvin in 2012, or EVO:RAIL as it was officially called, which then became Dell EMC VxRail. After a brief stop in the corporate Office of CTO I then joined the Office of CTO for Storage and Availability to focus solely on vSAN. I think it is fair to say that vSAN has been on top of mind for what feels forever. As such, I figured I needed a break, some time to think and talk about something different for a change, some time to learn new technologies, some time to work on something else.

Fortunately, VMware has this great concept called “Take 3”. Take 3 provides you the opportunity, if you have been with VMware for at least 5 years, to spend 3 months working on something else. No, I am not going to a cabin in the woods and think for 3 months. That would be nice, but that is not an option. Take 3 provides you the option to join projects, or teams, which have published an opening and are looking for help. I looked around the Take 3 portal to see what kind of opportunities were listed, and I found one that immediately caught my attention: Spatial Computing aka VR/AR/MR. (If you work for VMware and want to know more, or are interested simply go to the Take 3 portal, note that the Spatial Computing team has other T3 opportunities open.)

Some of you may recall the awesome demo Alan Renouf gave at VMworld during the keynote a few years ago. Well, that demo ultimately turned in to an incubation project which Alan is running together with my old professional services colleague Matt Coppinger. I had a conversation with Alan, Matt and their lead developer Arjun Dube and decided to jump on-board for 3 months. Note, jump on board for 3 months! This doesn’t mean I will be leaving the HCI BU or move away from vSAN. I will return for duty in March, but until then I will dive into virtual/augmented reality. I am aiming to update you folks occasionally, over the course of the next 3 months, on my experience of taking on this project. If you want to know more about what it is all about, listen to Alan on the VMTN Podcast below.

For now, I am looking forward to learning new technologies like AR, VR, GPUs etc. I am very thankful that VMware provides its employees with opportunities like these. The only thing I wonder is, why I waited 11 years before trying this. Ah well, time to put on my goggles and submerge in virtual reality!