Virtualization vendor VMware Inc. gained expertise quickly in crowd control when 14,000 people showed up to its annual conference in Las Vegas. While vendors like Symantec, Cisco, Left Hand, Brocade, Red hat, Third Brigade and NetApp displayed their wares, the Interior Health Authority and First American Corp. told users how virtualization paid off for them.
VMware announced its vCloud initiative, which includes carrier partners like British Telecom and Verizon.
With vCloud, companies would be able to use virtualization to use computing resources both inside and outside their firewalls, the company said. The intent is that when a company’s servers are near capacity, to a point where application response time is too slow, they can use off-site resources from a partner.
John Sloan, an analyst with Info-Tech Research Group, said he’s not sure whether vCloud is a gold rush or a land rush.
Another initiative announced at VMWorld was vClient, which is designed to give users a single view of all their applications and data. Paul Maritz, VMware’s chief executive officer, said the company plans to develop virtualization for clients other than desktop computers.
VMware security partners showcase their wares, though no products under the VMSafe umbrella, initially announced last February, were unveiled at VMWorld this year.
