I had the privilege of attending VMworld 2018 in Las Vegas as a blogger (thank you, VMware social team!). It was a unique experience for me, as I’ve attended the show as a vendor employee for a number of years. Going as a blogger enabled me to catch up with folks I hadn’t seen since last year, meet new ones, and hang out with old friends.
A recurring theme of many conversations was VMware’s focus on AWS. In fact, one off-hand comment that resonated with me was “whose conference is this?” While that was said in jest, it is interesting to see how the relationship between VMware and AWS has shifted over the years from competing on all fronts to the realization that many customers’ IT strategies feature offerings from both companies and that joint solutions are needed.One of the biggest announcements was Amazon RDS on VMware, which should prove to be a rather interesting solution marrying the best of both VMware and AWS.
It will be interesting to see what the future holds for both companies because, while there are great synergies, there is still strong competition.
VMworld has published most (all?) of the content from the conference, and there’s a tremendous amount of sessions related to AWS in the catalog. One of the highest rated sessions covered migrating to VMware Cloud on AWS (video & PDF) and I found it to be quite interesting. There’s a ton of great sessions that have been published – too many to list! Be sure to check them out.
Community
As always, the VMworld community is one of the best things about the show. Two things that stood out to me – and I fully admit that I’m a little bit biased 
– were the VMunderground party and the live #vBrownBag TechTalks. Both have been going on for many years, and while this year was the first that I wasn’t involved in some way with either (whether it was organizing, presenting, or supporting) it gave me the opportunity to experience them with fresh eyes. The VMunderground party continues to be the best community networking event, and this year’s was no exception. The #vBrownBag TechTalks have continued to mature and expand, and its success is due to a combination of passionate leadership and an even more passionate technical community. There’s over 60 recorded sessions on #vBrownBag’s YouTube playlist, and they’re full of solid content, with minimal fluff. I highly recommend checking them out.
