After two years of physical absence, it was finally upon us again from November 7 to 10: VMware Explore 2022 in Barcelona.
How big would the attendance be after two years of corona? That was the big question before VMware's largest event in Europe kicked off. However, all expectations were exceeded: the attendance was beyond expectations. In this article, Larik-Jan talks about the topics that stood out for him during VMware Explore.
Larik-Jan: “Besides the fact that VMware Explore is of course a very interesting and informative event, the social character should not be underestimated. At the convention, you can not only have a chat with your suppliers, but you can also approach people from VMware to ask about the development of certain products. This way you get an insight into VMware's roadmap in an approachable way. In addition, I really enjoyed seeing that the Dutch community was present in large numbers (there were as many as 1,000 Dutch people) and that the competitor colleagues were also open to talking to each other (seems to be a nice feature of the Dutch community)."
"In addition to the social nature of VMware Explore, of course I'm there to get useful information. What stood out during the keynotes was the word 'Cloud chaos.' We have, primarily also during corona, all moved very fast to the Cloud. But only now do we start thinking about things like: what is the management of this actually like? Has there actually been a well-thought-out plan to “go to the Cloud”? The practical reality is that some chaos did occur. VMware's strategy is focused on bringing structure back to that chaos. They do this by creating awareness about exactly where data resides. The discussion should no longer be about “which Cloud am I working in?” but about the importance of data, security and continuity. An important part of this, of course, is the sovereign Cloud. This is also where the Sovereign Cloud Summit on Monday afternoon connected well. This summit zoomed in on issues such as: what does sovereign Cloud really mean? Here I noticed that everything has to do with the control of data: where does the data run and what legislation is attached to it. Great to see that this is such a hot topic and that Fundaments as the first VMware Sovereign Cloud provider is already doing everything possible to guarantee that data sovereignty."
”I will be taking a few things I heard during VMware Explore back to the Netherlands. First, I'd like to concretize the data sovereignty we offer to our customers. What can our customers do with this? And how exactly do we handle this? Second, I want to focus even more on security products and even more application in our services. In addition to the fact that we already offer Disaster Recovery as a Service, we also need a specific Ransomware Recovery variant. We often see the disaster recovery service being used for ransomware disasters as well, but this service only provides part of the solution. We need to continuously strengthen our Cloud in order to master every possible vulnerability. Finally, we are going to focus on being able to further secure the data center components of the modern workplace, but also take that into our hosting expertise: being able to provide a platform for modern applications with Kubernetes ensures that application development can also be realized from a sovereign Cloud, without sacrificing the speed of innovation of all the rapidly changing needs and requirements from the developers of these applications.
How do we fulfill that journey to data sovereignty and best security for our customers? An article by Larik-Jan will appear next week in which he specifically discusses Fundaments' sovereign Cloud.
