David Marshall, a prominent virtualization expert, author of several tech books, owner of VMBlog.com had some time to share his insights with Vembu and it turned out to be an interesting take on various topics on virtualization & much more. Below are the excerpts from the Q&A:
Tell us about your journey into the virtualisation world?
David Marshall: Trying to remember my journey into the world of virtualization is a bit like trying to go back to relive a moment from high school – it feels like another lifetime ago! But, it’s also a great memory.
My virtualization journey started back in 1999 when I started using VMware Workstation on my local PC. That was the same year I started my first software company — a company called ProTier. We were an ASP (an application service provider – it’s what us old timers called ‘cloud computing’ back in 1999) using Citrix Metaframe. While trying to make the ASP business more profitable, I began experimenting with a new product that was in its Alpha state but about to hit the market, a little-known piece of software called VMware ESX. At the time, I was also using another pre-release server virtualization product called Connectix Virtual Server (later acquired by Microsoft and renamed Microsoft Virtual Server).
And that ladies and gentlemen was it for me! I was immediately bit by the virtualization bug and never looked back. On my journey, I helped create the first cross-platform (or multi-hypervisor) virtualization management product all the way back in 2001 (managed VMware GSX, VMware ESX and Connectix/Microsoft Virtual Server), and I kept the ball rolling with other ideas as I continued to come up with new and interesting ways to use virtualization technology to make IT life easier… started a few more startup ventures to make those products a reality (came up with the first gold image replication, architected an ‘any to any’ conversion tool, designed a network abstraction and isolation layer for VMs, helped design an orchestration platform, and worked on VDI and Workspace-as-a-Service offerings. Along the way, I also started VMblog.com in 2004, published my first server virtualization book in 2005 and the second in 2008, and authored InfoWorld’s Virtualization Report for its nine-year run.
My personal virtualization journey has been a blast! And yes, I’m still neck deep in virtualization 18 years later.
2) What will be the biggest trends in the field of Virtualization in the upcoming years?
David Marshall: There are plenty of coming trends that spoke off from virtualization. A few of them to keep an eye on include:
The desktop. I’m going to go out on a limb and tell people, “Yes, this is the year (or the coming year) of desktop virtualization. I’ve been involved in the VDI, DaaS and WaaS industry for the better part of about 6 years. So I’ve had a front row seat to watch VDI mature and develop into a more cloud-based workspaces offering with a renewed focus around the applications. There are plenty of companies offering up their own solution with their own spin on the virtual desktop right now, in addition to what Citrix and VMware are doing. Keep an eye on what all of these folks (big and small) are doing.
HCI will continue to make waves in the virtualization industry in 2017 and beyond. If you want to refresh your data center hardware, you should pick a hyper-converged system, especially one capable of hosting VDI.
Another area to continue watching is what companies are doing with automation, orchestration, machine learning and analytics… these areas are going to continue to come together to play an instrumental role in the speeding up and scaling out of enterprise deployments.
And yes, I’m also watching containers, microservices, and serverless computing evolve and take shape in the enterprise.
3) Why do you think that backups are important for any industry?
David Marshall: Doesn’t matter what industry you are in or how big or small your business is, regular backups are essential, necessary and critical.
Today’s world is always on and always connected. So whether you want to think about it or not, you need to be aware of business continuity, security and disaster recovery.
Failure to backup could cost your company dearly and have a crippling effect on your business. Today, we keep hearing about ransomware and being cyber-attacked, so security prevention and being able to recover when something breaks through becomes paramount to maintaining an ongoing business. And we can’t forget about natural disasters either. Being struck by one of these events could put a business out of business if they can’t recover or do so quickly.
Backups are a must have, not a nice to have. And companies need to treat it as such.
4) After having reviewed our product, what makes you think that our product stands out from competitors?
David Marshall: I think your product stands out when it comes to simplicity of use without taking away from the power and depth that’s behind it. It’s important to have a solution that can cross physical, virtual and cloud.
5) Describe our product in 1 sentence?
David Marshall: Vembu’s solution offers a single, friendly and easy-to-use interface with powerful underlying backup and replication technology that cuts across physical, virtual and cloud environments alike.
6) What are the improvements/suggestions needed for our product?
David Marshall: My suggestion? Keep doing what you are doing, listening to your users. They won’t let you down as they know your product best and know what they need as their own environments grow and mature. Along the way, make sure to maintain your simple to use interface, but continue to support a broad base of environments by keeping up with various hypervisor platform technologies, updates, new features, and make sure to keep adding to your cloud support in order to provide one solution across a host of any environments. Backup and restore is critical to a business – so if your product is powerful but easy enough to use, a company will have no excuse as to why they aren’t protected.
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