My Experience at VMworld, San Francisco, 2013

This year at VMworld, San Francisco, I had a choice, to attend either as a Visitor or as a Demo Booth staffer. I quickly chose the latter, as I could not resist getting face-time with customers! My decision proved fully justified, as I gained a lot from the discussions on the show floor. I was so busy, the 4 day event ended before I could notice it. It was really a great learning experience for me at the event to hear first-hand why customers prefer vBlock and FlexPod over other Cloud offerings. Many folks mentioned, that the unified support model that comes with vBlock and FlexPod, Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) that minimize guesswork and risk, combined with lower TCO and high-performance that comes with Cisco UCS, were all major factors that influenced their decision.

Along these very lines, I was able to grab some time with Jim McHugh, (our VP of Marketing for UCS) to discuss the emerging customer trends in private cloud, desktop virtualization, and other innovative solutions Cisco is building with VMware and its strategic partner ecosystem