The theme of this year’s VMworld is “Make you Mark.” The kickoff keynote delivered a familiar narrative placing the IT leader in the place of a hero, a cross between “Morpheus and Hermione,” gifted with powers to change the world.
To the skeptical in the audience, this type of storyline may have seemed a bit pandering, while others might not have given the story a second thought. But there is real truth to this narrative; IT should be the hero. IT is not just a necessary cog in the machine anymore; it is the engine of modern business. If an organization wants to redefine an industry, address some previously unmet demand, or in other words change the world, data is going to be the key part of that process. And who is going to figure out how to leverage data to drive that transformation? Where will the spark come from? The accounting department? No. It will come from IT.
But here’s the real question: What was your reaction to that narrative? Do you see yourself as a hero? Some will see this story as inspirational. Others will be more cynical. And that is the key.
Transformational, business-altering inspiration is a gift available to those with extra mental and physical cycles to seize it, while cynicism is the refuge of the tired and overworked.
Delivering modern IT with traditional tools is too hard, too complex. You can’t change the world if you spend all your time just maintaining basic services. This is the idea that brings us back to the story at VMworld.
There were several big announcements this week, with the bulk focused on enhancing VMware’s Kubernetes capabilities with Tanzu. This not one product, but a new portfolio of products and services designed to help enterprises better build, run, and manage software on Kubernetes, including:
· VMware Tanzu Mission Control – offering a single point of control to manage all Kubernetes clusters regardless of where they run, on or off premises.
· Project Pacific – according to the announcement, it’s in the technology preview phase, but this technology will transform VMware vSphere into a Kubernetes-native platform.
All signs point to Kubernetes being the platform of choice for modern application development. One VMware customer told me this week that all new app development in his organization will be container-based moving forward. Learning a new set of tools, controls, and security considerations, however, takes time and effort, and adds complexity. The benefits can be transformational, but the effort is taxing.
By consolidating the management of Kubernetes clusters, and transforming vSphere to be container-native, VMware is simplifying the management of traditional and modern apps into a single platform, one with which the bulk of IT already has familiarity and that can support both on- and off-premises infrastructure. This is the promise of VMware’s any app anywhere strategy.
To become the change agent your business needs you to be, you can’t waste time managing disparate silos and disparate platforms. Learning new technology has a cost, and that cost is time; lost time is lost opportunity. Businesses need IT to step up, but to do that the technology has to make life dramatically simpler. This is what VMware and its strides with Kubernetes are all about.
