Men&Mice at VMworld

Multicloud: A Major Focus at VMworld AND at Men&Mice

This week, October 5-7 was VMworld 2021 and I was able to attend the online sessions. I noticed a lot of parallels between what we’re focusing on at Men&Mice and what VMware is focusing on. I wanted to mention a couple of those here as Men&Mice and VMware work really well together.

Enterprise Sovereignty and Sustainable Networking

VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram started VMworld with his keynote, which really focused on multicloud. VMware’s vision of multicloud very much aligns with Men&Mice in that we both believe that a large reason to move to a multicloud architecture is to give companies the choice to use the best platforms for their apps and services, and this also includes on-premises solutions.

He mentioned a term he likes to use which is “Enterprise Sovereignty.” He defined it as “preserving the freedom of choice both now and in the future.” This idea may sound familiar to some of our regular readers as it very much aligns with a term we like to use – Sustainable Networking.

Sustainable Networking can also go a bit further than just offering choice, though, and while this was covered at VMworld, it wasn’t explicitly connected with the idea of Enterprise Sovereignty. Whether we’re talking about exercise regimens or moving to a multicloud architecture “sustainability” implies an understanding and relation to the people who have to use these solutions. In other words, vendors need to meet our customers where they’re at and then grow with them.

How Are We Meeting People Where They’re At?

VMware introduced several new and improved projects during the first few keynotes at VMworld. The two I really wanted to mention here, though, are VMware Cloud and Project Tanzu. Both of these are focused on multicloud with VMware Cloud aimed at Infrastructure and Project Tanzu aimed at DevOps people. So often traditional infrastructure companies are not focused on applications or the people that create and maintain them. VMware in the last several years has really done a 180 on the focus of apps and DevOps, which is really fantastic to see, especially because VMware is a software company. It really is all about the apps, because the apps are generally what bring in revenue and keep employees productive. So when we talk about network, compute, security, and storage, all of those things are just there to keep the app running, no matter where those four main pillars reside.

A few years ago VMware started meeting their customers where they’re at by basically putting vSphere on AWS. So you could move to the AWS cloud, but continue to use the software solutions you already knew without having to become a specialist on AWS.  Since then they’ve announced VMware Cloud which extends this capability to most major clouds. This is a brilliant move, albeit not a new one. I’m reminded of the story of the hood ornament and how it came into being. To make a long story, somewhat shorter, it’s all about the first automobiles that were available for purchase. No one was buying them, simply because they were so different than the horse and buggy people were used to. It’s just human nature to be a little bit concerned about the unknown. One day, though, a gentleman decided to just try putting a horse head on the front of the automobile and wouldn’t you know it…people started buying. It was just similar enough to what they knew that it made it more accessible. Not only that, since the automobiles would be sharing the road with horses, the horses were now less scared, so everyone could share the road more easily. As a remnant of that, we now have hood ornaments. This is what VMware is doing, just removing some of the barriers to entry for IT teams who are already overworked and don’t have time or budget for training.

At Men&Mice we’re helping remove these barriers to entry for multicloud as well. By offering a simple-to-use abstraction and orchestration solution, we make it really easy to view and manage DNS, DHCP, and IP information for all your platforms in a single place using the same software suite. So, it doesn’t require a specialist in Azure DNS, a specialist for AWS Route 53, another specialist for BIND and so on. This also puts some of the tier 1 troubleshooting in the capable hands of a tier 1 support team.

We’re also thinking about the DevOps teams, by offering an API-First solution. Anything that can be done in the GUI can be done in the API. This goes a long way towards collaboration among traditionally siloed teams. I recently just heard one of our customers actually has over 39,000 people using Micetro. What that means is that there are a lot of people outside of the DDI role, even outside of the networking role using Micetro. Given what I know about this customer, they automate everything to be as self-service as possible. The ability to do this with Micetro means faster go-to-market for applications and services especially in a multicloud environment.

Why Are You Moving to Multicloud?

In a recent blog I wrote about some of the main drivers to multicloud, and the VMworld keynotes certainly reflected a couple of the reasons I gave, specifically vendor management and disaster recovery. However, I did see some folks on Twitter disagreeing with these drivers, saying that it was all about the innovation that public cloud affords them. I’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us @MenandMice or @Malhoit for me directly and let me know!

If you’re interested in reading more about multicloud from Men&Mice check out this white paper: https://menandmice.com/multicloud-whitepaper