VMware brings app delivery to the web

We live in an app-centric world now. If you use a smart phone you probably have spent time searching the app store for the latest new app. Then you go to work and open up Word or Excel or Outlook to get your work done. Users are less and less interested in the operating system and more on how well their app will work on it. With that in mind, VMware announced the tech preview of AppBlast.

VMware takes Cloud Contracts globally

VMware has made steps to make the public cloud a much more dynamic system. VMware Global Connect is a partnering agreement between vCloud DataCenter certified vendors that will allow a customer to use all of their services with a single contract. Adding vCloud Connector into the mix will allow a customer to migrate systems from a private cloud to a local vCloud Datacenter provider.  VMware now has 7 global providers approved as vCloud Datacenter providers.  The vCloud DataCenter certification means that a vendor has built a full datacenter using a specific architecture that has been approved by VMware.  The Global Connect agreements provide shared SLA and reporting that is managed by the local provider but guaranteed regardless of the physical datacenter that the systems reside in.

VMware is raising the bar

On July 12, 2011, VMware CEO Paul Maritz and CTO Steve Herrod will be presenting on the next generation of cloud infrastructure. The webcast titled “Raising the Bar, Part V” has made many believe this will just be a fancy way to introduce the next generation of hypervisor with the release of vSphere 5, however if rumors hold true there could be quite a few more releases also with three breakout deep dives you can only guess.

9:00-9:45 Paul and Steve present – live online streaming
10:00-12:00 three tracks of deep dive breakout sessions
10:00-12:00 live Q&A with VMware cloud and virtualization experts

The event is free — if you sign up today you’ll get an email reminder. If you can’t make the whole event make sure you follow @ConvergenceTech or @mletschin on twitter since we will be following along. A few of my fellow vExperts will also be onsite for the event and will be taking questions during and after the event with the #vmwarecloud hashtag.

On Wednesday, we’ll be recapping the event on ourVMware Community Roundtable — join some of the VMware staff, myself, many of the vExperts and others for an hour of live Q&A.

If you want to talk about it live you can also join a group of virtualization professionals for a networking gathering at the DC vBeers event.

VMware comes around to supporting multiple vCenters

VMware released a new fling today Boomerang.  Boomerang allows for simple management of multiple ESX or vCenter servers simultaneously.  A great resource when you don’t have linked vcenters or are a consulting or engineer working in a large shop.  You can not have all your vcenters in one place with them even collapsing to a hyperlink when they get too big.  This is still Windows only though so no luck for the Mac and Linux guys.  This sounds great but where’s the catch… You can only do basic power operations so far.  If you want to get to vMotion, High Availability, storage configuration, host provisioning cloning, templates, monitoring, or alerts you need to go to vCenter direct.  The good news though is you can use the remote console.