Monthly Archives: April 2019

Apr 30 2019

DTW 2019 – VMware, Dell EMC, Microsoft!!

Wow… what an announcement at Dell Technologies World in Vegas yesterday!!!

In fact I’m so excited by the announcement that I’ve broken my blog silence!! On that subject first – one the hardest things I’m doing at the moment is juggling my new job alongside my new baby. I told my boss recently that it feels like I currently have 2 jobs and 2 managers – the daytime one and the evening one! =D

The new job at CloudHealth is fantastic, but there’s such a steep onboarding (90 day plan) that I’m spending my working hours reading documents and doing training (even on my commute to work)… then when I go home I’m busy dealing with both my kids. My weekends are pretty much dedicated to family and I’ve really not had much time to sit down and write my final two “Big Bets” blog pieces… >_<”

 

So where to start, well the obvious place is the unveiling of a new platform call Dell Technologies Cloud, basically a new set of cloud infrastructure solutions to make cloud environments simpler to deploy and manage – a consistent infrastructure and operating model for both hybrid and public cloud.
It’s a comprehensive vision for cloud – “From the data centre, to the edge, to the cloud!” – across the whole Dell Technologies family!

There are basically two ways to consume this new platform, the traditional “purchased CapEx solution” and the cloud-like “subscription-based OpEx pricing”.
Both consumption models are based on VxRail HyperConverged Infrastructure pre-loaded with VMware Cloud Foundation software.
The traditional purchased solution is aimed for private cloud solutions using the recently announced vCF + VxRail VMware Validated Design (VVD).

The new Dell Technologies Cloud Data Center-as-a-Service offering – VMware Cloud on Dell EMC – will provide simple, more secure and scalable infrastructure delivered as-a-service to customer’s on-premises data centre and edge locations. This is the first productisation of what was announced at VMworld 2018 as “Project Dimension.”
This Dell Technologies Cloud offering enables organisations to consume infrastructure, like a public cloud service, allowing IT organisations to eliminate the need for basic tasks, such as infrastructure management, troubleshooting and maintenance, with subscription-based pricing. It will be a fully managed service by VMware.

More info available on their press-releases:
https://corporate.delltechnologies.com/en-us/newsroom/delltechnologies-cloud-accelerates-customers-multi-cloud-journey.htm
https://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed.VMware-Transforms-Data-Center-and-Edge-Infrastructure-with-VMware-Cloud-on-Dell-EMC.1811531.html
The other exciting announcement was the partnership between VMware, Microsoft and Dell EMC. Through this collaboration, Microsoft will offer a fully supported and certified VMware cloud infrastructure service on Microsoft Azure!
The service will be delivered through VMware Cloud Verified partners, Virtustream and CloudSimple, and will be called Azure VMware Solutions. It will be built on VMware Cloud Foundation and deployed in Azure along with an integrated set of Azure services.
This is exciting news as now you can consume VMware infrastructure and operations on both AWS and Azure public cloud…. The top two pubic cloud players who dominate the enterprise market!
I’m just waiting for a demo to appear where you can vMotion from your on-prem vSphere environment onto VMware Cloud on AWS and then onto Azure VMware Solutions!!
This really is bringing the whole VMware vision of “Any Application, Any Device, Any Cloud” into reality….
Super stoked to see what CloudHealth have in store to help manage this new “Multi-cloud VMware world!”

More info available in the press-releases:
https://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed.Dell-Technologies-and-Microsoft-Expand-Partnership-to-Help-Customers-Accelerate-Their-Digital-Transformation.1811530.html
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2019/04/29/dell-technologies-and-microsoft-expand-partnership-with-new-vmware-solutions/

BTW, there was also other announcements (which I don’t have time to write about):

  • Dell Technologies Unified Workspace, which integrates solutions across Dell devices and services, VMware Workspace ONE and Secureworks – pretty much an evolution of Dell EMC’s VDI Complete solution now encompassing Secureworks.
  • Integration of Workspace ONE and Office365 – so many organisations are already on that Microsoft 365 journey and customers will now be able to use Workspace ONE to manage and secure Office 365 across devices via integration with Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory Premium as part of the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security suite.
  • Support of Windows Virtual Desktop in VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure – delivering a multi-session Windows 10 experience in the cloud, optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and apps.

 

Apr 4 2019

New Beginnings….

So it’s been just under a month since my last blog entry and just over 2 months since I left VMware. I was hoping that I would have more time to complete my “Big Bets” series of articles but unfortunately my life hasn’t stopped and I’ve been kept super busy!

Firstly, we had a new addition to the family – my 2nd daughter arrived 2 weeks ago and she’s been keeping us very very busy! It’s only been 3 years since our first child but it’s amazing how quickly the skills come flooding back…. not to mention the memories of sleepless nights as well!!
In a way, my redundancy came as a bit of a blessing as it meant I could be at home to help out my wife during the later stages of her pregnancy, doing school runs for our eldest and also helping with household chores and cooking. I think she was really appreciative that I was able to do that.
It also puts your work-life balance into perspective, I’ve enjoyed hanging around with my eldest daughter and I’m amazed at the little person she’s growing into!

Secondly, even though I haven’t been actively looking for work I’ve surprisingly been quite busy with interviews. I had planned to only start looking for work in April, but when a few opportunities arose to interview with a few well known companies I jumped on them.
It’s been quite a hectic interview process! Everyone was aware of the impending birth, so everything got squeezed into a few weeks…. I was even doing interviews the week of my daughters birth! She was 4 days late and thankfully I managed to complete a number of final interviews before her arrival.

So without further ado…. Who am I joining?!?

cloudhealth

Well, as of next week I am proud to announce that I will be joining the CloudHealth family as a Senior Technical Account Manager aligned to strategic channel accounts! Really excited to join CloudHealth, firstly because it’s back with VMware (but still run as a separate team) and secondly it opens up a great opportunity for me to pick up skills in AWS, Azure and GCP!
Throughout my career in IT, I’ve been quick to jump onboard with new technologies as the market changes direction… it happened when Blade technology was coming to the fore (I was certified for every blade vendor out there)… it happened when virtualisation became mainstream (where my love of VMware started)…. it happened when HCI became mainstream (Nutanix, vSAN, EVO:RAIL, VxRail)… and now it’s happening with Cloud! Totally stoked that I have a new challenge ahead of me!

To be honest, it’s been an interesting journey (and a bit ironic given my recent blog post)…. I was aware of roles being advertised within CloudHealth before I left VMware, but as I had no clue into what they did I kind of ignored them! It wasn’t till I stated reading and researching into them for my “Big Bets” blog article that I actually realised they had a fantastic solution and reputation! So when the TAM role appeared on the VMware careers website, I jumped at the chance to apply!
After several interviews I was asked to come back for final rounds the week of my daughters birth. So going with the popular consensus that the second child normally arrives early, I arranged for it to be after my baby’s due date…. little did I know she was too comfortable and would arrive late! That week was pretty stressful – trying to juggle preparing for an interview and presentation whilst also preparing for a birth that could happen at any time!! In the end, I had my final interview on the Thursday afternoon and at 3am Friday morning my wife went into labour…. so I’m a little thankful that my daughter was courteous enough to hold on till my interview was completed. =)

Baby arrived a healthy 8lbs and both mother and baby are doing really well! =)

Then a week later I got the verbal offer on the role!! It’s like the stars seemed to align for once! =)
(God works in mysterious ways!)

 

Anyways, long story short….. I’m back as part of the VMware family, albeit a different part of the business! But that said, totally looking forward to what’s in store for me at CloudHealth…. it’s a great product, with great people, now within a great company!

….. I just now need to make sure I stay for the long term! 😉

 

On a separate note, just picked up a reMarkable tablet and wrote most of this article on it…. the OCR function is pretty amazing! It’s an expensive piece of tech, but quite an interesting one! =)