VMworld 2010: Great Show

It’s officially over! For us, VMworld 2010 was an exciting ride.

Day one started with a bang when Network World named MokaFive BareMetal the Hottest Virtualization Product at VMworld. Even though our booth (#1736) was in the far corner of the show floor, we had a crush of traffic visit the booth to learn more about MokaFive. There was a lot of the excitement and buzz about MokaFive especially around our recent announcements on BareMetal player, our partnership with AVG and our MSP beta program. In addition to the high volume of booth traffic, we had a great set of conversations starting with The Register in the morning, Forbes in the afternoon, and a sprinkling of industry analysts throughout the day. Then there were meetings with prospects and partners that went into the wee hours of the morning. The great food and wine at Marlowe just made it even better.

The excitement continued into day two, three and four. The session on VDI TCO caught my attention. It was truly revealing and entertaining. The speaker said, “don’t bother trying to justify VDI on the basis of TCO, find alternative justifications like security etc.” Now that is what I call clean speaking. This just reinforces my conviction that the MokaFive datacenter-less (distributed) approach is the right way to go. Among other attractions, both Brian and Gabe from brianmadden.com stopped by the booth to discuss BareMetal , we had a surprise visit by our angel investor, Vinod Khosla, and Dale did a radio gig on Internet Evolution.

Net-net the predictions I made in the previous blog turned out to be nearly correct. The messaging was cloudy and VMWare killed CVP officially. But contrary to my prediction there weren't as many open source application companies. Well two out of three, ain't bad.

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products & Marketing

VMworld Predictions

As I previously noted, next week’s VMworld will be MokaFive’s first showing in two years. We’re putting the finishing touches on our booth and prepping our demos. While we count down the days, I want to share some thoughts on what I predict will come out of VMworld.

1. Cloudy messaging around cloud. You don’t have to be clairvoyant to see this one. VMworld 2010 will be all about the cloud, so expect to see everyone putting out some “cloud” story—whether they have a cloud offering or not. As such, expect to sift through these myriad messages for what’s real, what’s pure marketing and what’s simply lipstick on a pig. Despite best efforts to align with the cloud story, the plain fact is that cloud is not an all or nothing model.

As an example, let’s look at desktop virtualization—which is, after all, what we know best. While server virtualization is a key component of the cloud-based delivery model, on the desktop side, the cloud discussion can take an interesting turn. Too often, the most obvious approach has been to take a desktop, virtualize it and then put it in the cloud. But, keeping in mind that cloud is not “all or nothing,” how about just centralizing the management in the cloud, but still keeping the desktop with you.

2. VMware goes back to basics. Based on recent earnings and (non) developments and news from VMware, I anticipate that it will go back to its comfort zone and core competency: the server. Like all vendors, VMware fell prey to the trends—and why not, since they have the revenue and clout. But the reality is, VMware’s business is the data center. They will refocus (or reaffirm) their server play, including server-side desktop virtualization (VDI).

3. Open source ecosystem. Expect a lot of smaller open source type plays to jockey for a position to fill into VMware ecosystem either around open source management or open source application development. They’ve seen VMware move into open source software and open source tools, so they will be want to a part to play in this.

That’s it for my predictions. The last food for thought I will leave you with is the VMware vs. Microsoft match up. VMware has openly declared war on Microsoft --but just how exactly will VMware message this at the show. I cannot wait to hear what VMware will say in its keynote.

What do you expect to see or hear at the show this year? I will be hanging around MokaFive’s booth (#1736), so would welcome your thoughts in person. This has always been one of my favorite shows, and I am excited for some real dialogue with some of the best minds out there.

Of course, we will also be demoing the MokaFive Suite, our new multi-tenancy capability and an exciting peek into a new forthcoming product that I believe will be a real game-changer. And we also will be giving away an iPad. Swing by for details.

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products & Marketing

Manage Desktops from the Cloud

Over the last two years, we’ve been helping our customers -- many of them very large brands with thousands of users -- succeed in rolling out the MokaFive Suite to their employees. Today, we’re taking the first step to make our virtual desktop management solution available to smaller companies – by enabling MSPs to offer desktop as a service with MokaFive Suite Service Provider Edition.

As part of this roll out, we’re opening up our beta program for managed service providers (MSPs) that want to offer desktop management from the cloud. Service Provider Edition includes capabilities that would allow an MSP to manage multiple customers on a single platform. As such, we’ve architected our core offering on a fully multi-tenant infrastructure, added reporting and enabled delegated management for MSPs.

This is great news for MSPs in that it can improve operational efficiencies of their desktop delivery and enable them to offer desktop management as a service at a lower overall cost. Many desktops in the world today are not managed within the enterprise, but managed by outsourced providers. This is due to the economies of scale (and skill) that can be achieved by outsourcing vendors as they pool managed desktop services across many companies.

There are other desktop management service offerings on the market, of course, but most of them have focused primarily on using the VDI-based model where both the desktop execution and management are in the cloud. As we have discussed in previous posts, that approach has inherent deficiencies such as no offline access and a poor end user experience. What we offer with the Service Provider Edition is desktop management services from the cloud, while still allowing for the virtual desktop to be executed locally and to be available online or offline.

That’s why we felt it was important to bring the power of centrally managed, locally executed MokaFive LivePCs to the channel, enabling our MSP partners to offer this technology to their customers.

If you are an MSP interested in joining our beta program, click here.

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP of Products & Marketing

Tachibana teams up with MokaFive in Japan

Today we announced Tachibana Eletech Co. Ltd as a MokaFive distributor in Japan. With nearly 90 years under its belt, Tachibana is one of the most respected and well-established Japanese technology firms and will be a solid partner to bring MokaFive solutions to market.

Security and cost are two of the most important factors influencing the deal, according to Masao Hamamura, operating officer, Information & Communication Systems at Tachibana. His statement for our press release today was, "Security is a top concern for our enterprise clients, and MokaFive provides the best solution to secure desktop environments in a wide variety of secure remote computing scenarios. Another major factor that makes MokaFive Suite platform superior to competitive products is that it does not require our customers to invest in new hardware."

This is MokaFive's first major international channel partner announcement and with MokaFive Suite available as an easy-to-install platform, building out the channel network will be a primary focus for us. In addition to consulting, reselling, and developing systems using MokaFive, Tachibana will also use MokaFive technology to develop new products to extend its thin-client business unit, TC Cube.