Good Bye VMware.. See you at the Headquarters!

A quick note to let everyone know about a major change in my professional and our (family) personal lives. Time to say goodbye to my years of working closely and directly with VMware customers.

Out of the 13 years of my professional career, I have spent close to 9 years of working on VMware technology. During this time I have worked in various roles. I started as a Technical Support Engineer and slowly transformed into a Solution Architect. Having worked on more than 60 complex engagements, I might have not seen it all, but I can say that I have worked with some very smart customers, partners and colleagues who have made this journey amazing. I am most thankful to everyone who has helped me learn and grow during this time and I am looking forward carry on the fun in the next phase of my career. The thanksgiving tradition would not be complete without mentioning the amazing support from my family who bear with my tantrums and toddler like behavior at times ☻☻☻

While most of the readers of vXpress know me as an expert on vRealize Operations Manager, the reality is that I chose to write about my experiences around ops manager more than anything else since Operations is always considered as a low priority requirement in most designs and deployments I have come across. You can buy the best hardware and software to run enterprise IT, however if you do not have a solid operations plan and people backing that plan, chances of success are quite weak. Putting operations first has been my goal as the acid test of a technology happens on DAY 2 and not Day 1 in almost every case.

While day to day operations is one piece of the puzzle, the other important aspect in a virtual world has been capacity management. I think while the cost of capacity is going down and you can buy in abundance even if you do not require it, the pain point to solve is management of all that capacity and the underlying constructs (physical hardware or software) it brings along with it. Even if you manage to look at capacity in a single frame, you will certainly leave behind the other important aspects which are related to capacity such as Configuration, Performance and Availability. I think while there are products out there to solve individual problems, we always need something which can cover almost all the use cases associated to these four pillars.

With the above in mind, the other important aspect is integration. It could be integration with the solution sets an enterprise is currently vested in (some people call it legacy) and integration points to any future solutions to be used. Sometimes, it could be integration with the same solution stack available from the same software vendor, for instance integration of vRealize Operations Manager with the other products in the vRealize Suite, vCloud Suite, NSX, VSAN and other technology partner products and solutions.

If you pause and think about the above problem statement, you would quickly realize that this is a Problem which would be ongoing. A solution to such a dynamic problem has to be ahead of its game to be relevant to this ever changing landscape, rather than playing a catch up.

I have a single word to summarize what I mentioned above, and the word is "OPPORTUNITY"

With this opportunity in mind, I have taken up a role in VMware's Cloud Management Business Unit at the head quarters in Palo Alto and I will be starting on the 7th of December 2016. I will join the team as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff and the role will allow me to work very closely with the entire eco-system of people within and outside of the organization working to solve the problem I described before. I will be primarily working on defining the real world use cases and challenges faced by customers beyond Day 1 of embarking on their Virtualization / SDDC / Cloud journeys and provide solutions to these problems. The end goal of the role would be to incorporate these Use Cases and Solutions into the VMware Cloud Management Product line and continuously work on enhancing the experience of both Enterprise IT and Line of Business of our customers.

I have lived some amount of this role in the past two (2) years as an Ambassador to the office of the CTO at VMware and now I get to do this as a full time job. I am very excited about the opportunity and I look forward to share my experiences through vXpress as I have been doing for the past few years now. Thanks once again to everyone who have helped me learn and grow. As always, I need all your best wishes for the Next Innings of my career. If you are at VMware HQ, make sure to swing by and meet. I can be reached on duas@vmware.com.

Let the work begin!!