Vegas, Baby, Vegas

I’ll be here in a few hours. The travel gods willing, anyway.

The target of the visit is VMWare’s annual VMWorld show, and I’m looking forward to hearing the state of the VMWare over the next two days. Specifically, I’m interested to gauge reactions to open source competition and jockeying as well as the strategies with respect to cloud computing (which, overly attentive readers might remember, I’ve been critical of in the past).

It should be an interesting trip, not least because VMWare is nearing a proverbial crossroads in its existence, in my view. It effectively owns the virtualization space, but the path ahead is uncertain. Competition at the hypervisor layer will be fierce, whether it’s from Microsoft or open source, and the management layer that still differentiates VMWare’s product line may be an attractive target for the IT management encumbents.

All food for thought, I think. Anyway, it should be fun. If you’re looking for me, your contact information as always is here. The caveat being that with an analyst slate and Corey, Jim and others in town, free time might be tough to come by.