Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

My good pal, CEO of Virtualization.com just called me while I was driving back home after having a solid workout, that Diane Greene has been replaced by an ex-Microsoft exec! This news is shocking for: - The great leadership that Diane offered to the company - She had an amazing vision, OK CNN, Forbes et al have always spoken of the lack of business acumen - She had a strong following of her solid engineering staff and I'm sure a lot will be reconsidering their future immediately - A lot might change in the top exec ranks of VMware as well, for instance what will happen to Mendel etc This is definitely a breaking news and still in a way a sad news. I am fond of Diane and her style and I'm sure she'll start a revolution someplace else soon enough. Here's the link to Virtualization.com who picked it up from MarketWatch . Reuters thinks that its mere competition and not weak economy: "You have to believe this (change in revenue forecast) is due more to new competiti...

Where Ms Greene differs from the old school of high-tech bosses is how she sees the interplay between competition and co-operation. “I grew up playing Monopoly and Risk,” she says. “You have to collaborate to win these games—and compete when it is time to compete. But if you compete and break somebody’s trust you are going to lose the next time.” Maintaining trust means always being clear about what you are doing, she says, particularly since many of her firm’s partners are also rivals. What is more, Ms Greene argues, “With the internet, you can compete more effectively by being open.” When Microsoft tried to restrict how VMware’s customers could use its software with Windows, for instance, customers complained publicly and helped VMware prepare a white paper about Microsoft’s licensing practices that was posted online—after which the software giant relented. Sadly, being open and playing nice has often been a recipe for losing against Microsoft. Even within VMware, some people observ...

By The Guardian and CRN, not by me ;-) CRN: What are the types of companies VMware looks at in terms of being suitable for acquisitions? Greene: Well, we look at technologies where there's an area we want to build, and there's some key technologies that might already be out there in a startup. So we acquire for that. We've also acquired a company in Bulgaria that we've been outsourcing a lot of work to that has just incredibly talented engineers. So we just acquired the whole company for its engineering talent. Or then there's the example of Dunes (Technologies), where it's process automation for virtualization. That was a solution that our customers wanted integrated in with our virtualization suite. So we bought the solution, because it had been built specifically for our virtualization suite. The acquisitions have been going well, in terms of people come in and seem to really enjoy joining the company. So building out the product suites is the major initiativ...

How soon before we get to the point where we have virtualization for everyone? Virtualization is definitely headed toward ubiquity. At VMworld [in September] we announced our embedded hypervisor, the ESX3i, and many of the major x86-based hardware vendors announced they will ship servers with an embedded ESX server in them. Anything that's virtualized has more flexibility, better utilization, and stronger reliability and security properties. I'd say there's still some hardware-assist work to be done. We estimate that about 90 percent of applications today belong in virtual machines. Once the final hardware assist is there from the processor and peripheral vendors, all applications will run in virtual machines. What it gives you is this single way to manage your software and manage it completely separately from your hardware. There's some industry talk about the eventual emergence of a complete virtualization system. What's your vi...

TNE = The New Establishment. The boast is not mere corporate puffery. Because VMware’s technology allows a single server to handle a workload that once would have required many, it cuts energy consumption by as much as a factor of ten. Servers, which accounted for about 2 per cent of power consumption in the United States last year – as much as television sets – are a key target in the battle against global warming. “Look at it this way,” Ms Greene says. “The average server produces 12.5 tonnes of CO2 a year – that’s every server. A car produces about 3.5.” Such green credentials are, for Vanity Fair, pure TNE gold – and yet, for all this, Ms Greene simply does not strike one as a TNE type. In terms of executive power, she ranks alongside Larry Ellison, of Oracle, and Steve Ballmer, of Microsoft. But her manner is unlike that of her combative, bombastic alpha male peers. Check it out

The sea and the water INDEED does something to you. Its good to see that Diane and I have something in common (having sailed the world myself for 9 odd years). Here's her story: Relatively few people tell Greene anymore what she can and cannot do. After nearly 30 years, numerous seafaring adventures, three jobs with staid technology companies, and two mildly successful startups, Greene is president and chief executive of VMware, the most important new business software company in Silicon Valley in a decade. It's creating a whole segment of the software industry, outsmarting the likes of Microsoft , and making gobs of money. A very well told "story".

Diane Greene answers: At a question and answer session with reporters at the 2007 VMware Conference Sept. 11, Diane Greene, VMware's president and CEO, said that while her company is prepared to buy other businesses, VMware is not planning a major purchase anytime soon. "We don't anticipate a large acquisition," Greene said during the session with journalists. "That being said this is an opportunistic business and we are keeping our eyes and ears open. However, I don't see a large acquisition anytime soon." What Greene and her management team are looking for are companies with either technology or solutions that can help grow or strengthen VMware's product line, such as its Virtual Infrastructure suite. Check it out.

Change is the bigger challenge. IOt is actually, EVERYTHING! We all want to do it right, all of us, we just need to adapt to the new change. Our server need to adapt, our staff needs to adapt, our organization (IT) needs to adapt as a whole. But lets all start doing it! Change in thinking According to Wanduragala, “the blade market will explode” following the launch of the new server, but he accedes the net effect of virtualisation is “less physical servers will go out the door”. For this reason he says IBM will move to services as an additional revenue stream, as he maintains “everybody loses revenue” under a virtualisation model if they only look at hardware for income. Wanduragala says IBM will also advise its clients to expand into services for this reason. “It's about reach and teach.” While IBM can provide services to its resellers, those companies can in turn provide services to their clients. “Virtualisation is the killer application for the industry,” he says, as it allows...

I thought so! when I was scrolling from number 10 to 9 to.., I was just hoping that she wouldn't end up being 3rd or 2nd! Great job, Diane and congrats!!! See EWeek.

Gosh, that is one such an honor. Diane is my hero as well. Her poise and simplicity while steering a beast of a machine called VMware, (can we stop calling VMware an 800 pound gorilla folks?), is a great sign of leadership. 5 Anita Borg, born 1949, made a major contribution to the role of women in modern computing. After a career in computing, including a long stint at Digital, Borg founded the Institute for Women and Technology. 4 Kim Polese. Once a rising star at Sun, Polese made her name in the dot-com era when she set up Marimba, an early proponent of internet push software. She now runs SpikeSource, a company that certifies stacks of open-source programs. 3 Diane Greene might well be the most important woman in IT today. As founder and CEO of VMware she runs what is possibly the biggest business technology success story of the decade so far. The MIT graduate previously worked at firms including Sybase, SGI and Tandem. As a child, she made cash in a more humble way, fishing for cra...

While the market is heating up with VMware's IPO and XenSource's acquisition, Diane takes a moment to enjoy the fruits of her firm by ringing the bell. There is sure going to be a heated battle soon and times might be a lot different than they have been in the past, but no harm in taking a break and basking in the glory once in a while. Good job Diane (and the rest of the team) for providing us with a cool and innovative technology!

Diane Greene, our favorite CEO, was interviewed. "I think there is a real desire out there now to host desktops on a server," said Greene, who holds degrees from MIT, the University of Vermont and the University of California at Berkeley. "I think you're going to see the ability to run more desktops on servers and companies investing more in thin clients. This is going to allow companies to have PCs with instant restart, no booting and have a lot more control over the management of the data." The lady has a point. Not only that but hosting multiple VM desktops on powerful desktops is also a growing need. So indeed there is a very rich roadmap out there. Effective collaboration is now the key to future success! But anyways, read the rest here .

Visiting reporter @Techcrunch, Vivian Wu reporting... It was the Girls’ Middle School Entrepreneurial Night, hosted by Google. One after the other, ten teams of 3-5 seventh grade girls presented their Powerpoint on stage to a panel of Silicon Valley judges and an audience of 400 parents, teachers and students. The students’ goal: to raise $100-250 from a venture capitalist to fund operations until May. The judges: successful entrepreneurs like Diane Greene from VMWare and Christine Comaford-Lynch from Mighty Ventures, and experienced investors from Bay Partners, InterWest, Kleiner Perkins, Versant, and TA Associates. As many of us asked each other in amazement, how old were you when you made your first presentation to 400 people? How old were you when you raised money for your first venture? Well Diane is indeed a true inspiration to men and women alike. Check it out...

David Marshall reports... "We started VMware with the belief that virtualization was one of those rare technologies that could fundamentally change the established IT landscape and drive significant new value for customers and the industry in ways few could imagine," said Diane Greene, president of VMware. "The accelerating adoption of VMware products by customers around the world, the new market opportunities it has created for partners and its emergence as one of the highest-growth multibillion-dollar software sectors has made virtualization the most significant IT trend of this decade." The technology that will transform IT. I have always said that. IT has long been seen as a bottleneck. Today with such persuasive (which eventually will lay the path of pervasiveness with Grid Virtualization) will force the masses to adopt Virtualization as the the sole means to enhance and elevate their planes of productivities to new levels. VMware has done an excellent job at i...

I'd actually love to hear her talk (as in podcasts) but I'm rather content with her blogging at VMTN . In the midst of mad rush towards Virtualization and where everyone is setting and freeing their software (no matter its junk or means absolutely nothing). Anyways each to his own. but still one HUGE HUGE issue is being forgotten. The customer is getting smarter by the day. I think Diane raises some very crucial issues in her first post. Benchmarks. There are starting to be multiple offerings for virtualization and the customer needs a way to evaluate the performance of the different offerings on apples to apples basis. There should be a benchmark that can show the performance in real-world relevant ways and also in a way that requires as inexpensive a setup as possible. Yes, I want benchmarks . I'm not going to risk my business on anything. I want a solid product! I think I will talk a bit about "Why cook a solid virtualization product?" soon. I love to do the i...

This interview was with "The Register". Her take on Databases. Yes and I'd really love to see those developments going in the direction of Oracle RAC. I'm sure there are lots of SQL Server clusters running on VMware in production. El Reg: What kind of applications are companies still a bit nervous about moving onto a virtual machine? DG: I would say it is completely horizontal in the apps they are doing, but the apps where somebody might not do it is where you have something that uses every bit of a huge machine - like a giant database. People run databases in the virtual machines, but a giant database that is using a whole machine and could use even more isn't on a virtual machine today. I do think that will happen one day, but I think it will happen when the hardware support for virtualization gets further along. El Reg: How many companies really do run Oracle on top of a virtual machine? DG: Lots. We see SQL Server and Oracle all the time. It's pretty wides...

No doubt 2005 has been a great year for VMware and let me tell you 2006/2007/2008 will be (in my words) golden years for VMware. Like any ultimate geek club, VMware will lead and stay the leader. There have been talks about VMware cutting lose from the storage giant EMC , although the heavyweight marketing backing is not something you'd want to get rid off. And given the fact that MS has it's own plans for it's Virtual Server , one should not forget sometimes riding the camel in a desert is a better deal than walking it alone and running out of fuel. Anyways those are speculations and maybe someday VMware will decide to go it's own way or may not... Anyways here a few excerpts... How do you see the technology coming together between VMware and the management tools and devices that are tying into virtualization? Greene: We have an existing SDK out there for managing our virtual machines. IBM Director, HP's virtualization management software, CA's Unicenter and BM...