VMWorld and VDI

Last week, I attended VMWorld in San Francisco. It was a fantastic conference with a very large number of companies, and the air was filled with excitement.

There were exciting expansion stage software companies focusing on managing virtual environments, backing up virtual machines, and managing the cloud; there were start-ups just starting to make a name for themselves; and there were the established players like Cisco, CA, and HP laying claim to emerging markets, whether through their own products or acquisitions.

There were also quite a few venture capital funds at the conference looking for new investments, and exploring business growth strategies and company exit strategy for their portfolio companies.

Many people have done great write-ups of the conference, including folks like Jerome Wendt.

I came away with a couple of observations.

One, managing the cloud — and providing the tools to plan for, define, monitor, manage, and secure cloud and virtual environments — is a fast growing opportunity and still anyone’s game. That said, it’s extremely crowded, and getting more so by the minute. Depending on how “cloud” is defined, I suspect that most of the earlier sub-sectors of this larger market have cumulatively raised more in venture capital than they have received in revenue.

Two, while point solutions like Veeam (www.veeam.com) and Vizioncore (www.vizioncore.com) are carrying the day in traction right now, broader platform companies are gaining steam and landing six figure and seven figure deals.
Three, VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is a hot topic whose hype of a few years ago is now being matched by real demand and traction in the space on a much wider scale than before. I spoke with several analysts and VARS that are seeing strong demand for solutions, and with several expansion stage software companies that are closing lots of deals.

All in all, lots of opportunities for investors and vendors alike.