As the VMworld Conference opens today in San Francisco, vendors are lining up to proffer their wares and engage with virtualization specialists from far and wide. Despite the event being held under the auspices of VMware, among the most vociferous of attendees taking on the market is Microsoft.
This year the company insists that it will "differentiate Microsoft from VMware" as it presents an end-to-end virtualization-to-cloud offering. Citing the example of Fortune 500 company CH2M HILL, which migrated 30 VMware virtual machines to Hyper-V, Microsoft argues that its System Center Virtual Machine Manager lets business groups self-provision and save money -- thereby giving it a lead over Vmware.
VMware on the other hand will be aiming to steal a march not only on Microsoft but also over all attendees by talking about the work its R&D labs are carrying out on human-computer interfaces.
In a keynote entitled 'The future is closer than you think', VMware CTO and VP of R&D Dr. Stephen Herrod will talk about computing moving away from traditional PC and mobile devices and how we will need to adapt our means of interacting with information. Or in more simple terms, how these developments will affect the structure and operation of virtualized data centers.
Herrod will ask, "What will human-computer interfaces look like in the future? How will they help us to work and live differently? How will computing become decoupled from our familiar computers and cell phones, so that it becomes more integrated with the environment around us?"
Global Diamond (i.e. top tier) sponsors for this event also include Cisco, Dell, EMC and NetApp so there will be plenty of healthy battle for the hearts and minds of attendees as the argument for data center virtualization takes center stage.
