A few weeks ago I flew into Barcelona for the annual VMware showcase that is VMware Europe 2018 and this year was much different to when I attended in 2017 due to my role change in January where I joined the Cloud Management Business Unit (CMBU) as part of Customer Success Engineering.
My time this year would be spent in more customer meetings and internal discussions as well as providing support to my fellow CMBU colleagues during their sessions.
Unfortunately due to my late notification that I was going to be attending VMworld, I was only able to secure 1 slot at Specialist Roundtable Sessions which forms a part of TAM Customer Day.
Specialist Roundtable Sessions are 45 mins sessions that are spread out over 54 tables and feature Product Specialists and Subject Matter Experts for the VMware portfolio. My session was titled “vRealize Operations…your questions & challenges”.
Although I hosted a similar session last year, the difference this time round was that I was more focused on understanding customer use cases instead of more troubleshooting focused and to see where customers were seeing challenges in using vRealize Operations. I could then take this feedback back to R&D and discuss how we could potentially incorporate it into future releases of vROps.
Welcome and Executive Keynote
Since I was hosting my Specialist Roundtable Session later in the day I took a much more leisurely approach to Day 0 where I arrived at the Fira with enough time to get registered, catch my bearings and head over to watch the Welcome and Executive Keynote, the welcome and intro was again given by Alan Barber, VP WW Technical Account Management who was then following by Sanjay Uppal, VP + GM, Velocloud who gave the Keynote.
I found Sanjay’s keynote highly informative as I wanted to understand more about Velocloud and what they are bringing to the VMware portfolio. In particular the concept of SD-WAN and its integrations with NSX Data Center and NSX Cloud.
Following Sanjay’s keynote there was a TAM Customer Panel hosted by Amanda Hill, Senior Director, TAM EMEA which featured 3 TAM customers providing their insights into how they are using VMware products and services to transform their business. In particular how the TAM relationship has been beneficial to them as well.
Specialist Roundtable Session
For my Specialist Roundtable Session we had a full table and were also fortunate to have colleagues from Product Management join to provide their insights and commentary. Overall the session was beneficial both for myself and also the TAM customers with a wide range of topics being discussed. In the end some business cards were exchanged and there are ongoing follow up meetings taking place as a result.
After my roundtable session I went to catch up on e-mails and chat to some co-workers so I missed the Afternoon General Session with Brian Madden, Lead Field Technologist, EUC Office of the CTO. I also briefly attended the TAM Customer Reception and chatted to some co-workers but no selfie with Pat this year!
Conclusion
Overall the TAM Customer Day and Specialist Roundtable Session was a success for me and there were some interesting questions and scenarios raised along with follow up discussions with TAM customers.
It was also beneficial to hear more about Velocloud and technologies like SD-WAN which look really interesting and will address a lot of customer use cases relating to edge devices etc.
Finally I was happy to hear how our customers are using vRealize Operations and the use cases that the product is addressing which is always good!
Stay tuned to more posts reviewing my time at VMworld Europe 2018!
–Lukas
lukaswinn.net 
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