VMworld: Storage is Critical to Cloud Computing

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As this year’s VMworld illustrates, interest in virtualization continues to grow at a breathless rate. Drew Robb reports from San Francisco.

This week’s VMworld conference in San Francisco highlighted how it is possible to prosper regardless of the state of the economy. Fewer than 200 people gathered at the first VMworld in 2004. By 2008, it was up to 10,000 – right when the recession hit. While some IT conferences have faltered since that time, attendance jumped to 12,000 last year and 17,000 for this week’s show here in San Francisco. Numbers aside, the event brought some youthful enthusiasm to a storage world that can sometimes be a little staid.

This week’s VMworld show featured a collection of new applications for virtual environments, a heightening of the buzz around the cloud, a couple of acquisition announcements from VMware (NYSE: VMW), and a litany of storage vendors trying to hone in on the action.

“Every VM takes up storage,” said Greg Schulz, an analyst with StorageIO Group.

VMware’s corporate dad was never far away from the VMworld party. The theme of the event, “Virtual Roads, Actual Clouds,” echoed EMC’s “Journey to the Private Cloud” messaging from May’s EMC (NYSE: EMC) World conference in Boston. But like a good father who doesn’t want to embarrass his offspring when they are hanging out with their friends, EMC stayed in the background. Or perhaps the better analogy might be a father proudly watching his boy become the number one pick in the NFL draft.

Read the rest at Enterprise Storage Forum.