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Posts Tagged ‘partner’

It’s not quite VMworld, but if you work for a VMware partner in North America chances are good your are going to Las Vegas next week for VMware Partner Exchange 2010 (PEX2010) at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. I’m sure there are more than a few that are traveling from overseas to attend as well. I’m headed out this Saturday, and a full week of PEX2010 starts for me early Sunday morning.

Follow the event posts here on VM /ETC or catch my "micro blogging" on Twitter (@rbrambley). Be sure to watch the hash tag #vmwarepex as well as the event’s twitter account @vmwarepex2010 in this Tweetgrid. Partner Exchange is always limited in what information can be made public, but there is always something interesting being talked about via social networking during the event.

If you are going to be there let me know. Here’s a quick list of what I know I will be doing next week. Maybe our paths will cross?!

If my tweets start to seem a little strange Sunday afternoon there’s nothing wrong. Check the end of this post to understand why.

Read the rest of this entry »

The combination of the excitement surrounding the vSphere Launch event and the reality of getting back to business after being out of town kept me from posting the various pictures I took during the VMware Partner Exchange 2009 conference (PE09) in Orlando, FL. Most of the photos were already tweeted as Twitpics during the event, but I’ve finally found some time to share what I’ve got as one collection.

I put together this grid collage from the photos taken with my Blackberry Curve. The photography is not too good, but the memories are great!

Click the collage for a larger view.
Doug Hazelman of Veeam made a quick video of his trip to Orlando for PE09 and posted it on his The Virtual Traveller blog. At the end is some brief footage Read the rest of this entry »

For some great additional coverage of VMware Partner Exchange 2009 (PE09) check out fellow vExpert Brian Knudtson’s knudt blog. He has been posting a day by day summary of his PE09 experience. I first met Brian on Monday during the VMware Partner Technical Advisory Board (PTAB) and have since had the pleasure of bumping in to him during the conference sessions and at a few tweetups. BTW, you can also follow Brian on Twitter.

Here is a listing of Brian’s posts on PE09 so far, a few quotes, and some of my own comments. Read the rest of this entry »

Although I am at Partner Exchange 2009 (PE09) in Orlando, FL this week, most of the conference content is VMware partner specific or still restricted under non disclosure agreement (NDA). So, I have not put much of an effort in posting. This will change soon, however!

In the meantime, here are some summary links and some quick thoughts about what has been discussed publicly so far at the conference.

Dave Lawrence has summarized the first 2 Keynote/General Sessions on his VMguy Blog:

• First day of keynotes at Partner Exchange
• Day 2 Keynotes at Partner Exchange

Seemingly related to the PE09 Keynotes but not confirmed (by VMware or myself), Read the rest of this entry »

XenServer 5 is ready for the Enterprise. That’s been one of the flavors of the partner “kool aid” flowing here at Citrix Summit 2008 this week. Customer adoption will gauge this statement over the next year, but from a feature stand point Citrix’s latest version of XenServer now has the “bells and whistles” necessary to compete for market share in the number one strategic technology for 2009 (according to Gartner), virtualization. Citrix is not just promising future releases and roadmaps either (although there is some of that happening here too), but partners are seeing demos and participating in hands on labs for product capabilities already available.

I was told over 100 new features and enhancements have been added to XenServer 5.0. I can’t say that I have experienced all 100+ of them this week personally, but I’ve seen enough to know the changes are obvious and impressive.

Click through this SlideShare.net presentation for new feature technical details and images provided by Barry Flanagan on his Citrix Community blog. Read the rest of this entry »

I am in Orlando, FL this week attending the Citrix Summit 2008 Partner Conference. Although I will not be live blogging, I will try to write summary posts of some of the sessions I get to attend. Much of the material from this conference is subject to the Citrix Partner NDA, so I will be limited to what I can report. I’m looking forward to technical sessions and labs on XenServer 5.0, XenDesktop, and learning more about how XenApp Server can be hosted as a VM on XenServer. I’m sure I’ll also get to hear a lot about how XenApp can publish applications for virtual desktop solutions as well.

I will tag all posts from this event as citrixsummit2008 for future reference.

The conference is being held at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Hotel. It’s a location in right in the middle of the Disney properties and parks. This morning after breakfast I was able to enjoy a great walk to the Disney Boardwalk, and then I followed a paved trail around the hotel’s central lake which took me past the neighboring Beach Club and Yacht Club Hotels as I worked my way back to the Dolphin building again.

I’m not sure of the cost of a family vacation at the Swan and Dolphin or one of the properties I walked past, but if you get the opportunity I would highly recommend staying here. I’ve seen a lot of families here so it must be reasonable. There are free water taxis to Epcot Center, and free buses to everywhere else. Click on the resort map image to the right for a larger view of the location.

As I am writing this I can hear fireworks, so I assume it must be Epcot’s nightly show. I’ll be sure to catch that tomorrow!

I posted a Capacity Planner FAQ document last week. The purpose of that post was to offer technical, sales, and security answers to commonly asked questions about the Capacity Planner product. I quickly received a comment asking “what about the free licenses?” I thought what a great topic for another Capacity Planner post, but it really wasn’t relevant to content about the tool itself. Following up on that thought, this post dives into the use of the product by an authorized VMware Partner to deliver either a pre sales estimate or a professional services project. At the end of this post is a high level description of a few common Capacity Planner services projects and the deliverables associated with each service.

First things first. Yes, now VMware is providing free licenses for Capacity Planner to qualified Partners. Virtualization.info reported this announcement back in June, and as Alessandro points out.

“Partners will not be required to buy any license anymore (even if they will still have to attend a classroom course that doesn’t come cheap). They will just have to login on the online portal, create a new profile and start monitoring the customer’s infrastructure. The data will stay online for six months and then will be archived.”

Depending on the relationship between VMware, the partner, and the customer, free licenses were not uncommon before either. Either way, I want to emphasize there is an initial investment by the Partner both financially and intellectually. To get the free licenses Partners must join the Partner program, certify VCPs, and attend the Capacity Planner classes and the Virtualization Assessment boot camp.

What does this mean to VMware’s customers new and old? Read the rest of this entry »