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Trending VMworld PR Topics: The Approach to VMworld

A co-worker last week put it directly, "The stage is set for VMworld." The comment was perhaps a bit hyperbolic, of course, as the approaching VMworld conference certainly did not drown out chatter about Lindsay Lohan on the news channels. Looking at the calendar in the technology PR world, however, there certainly doesn't seem much between now and the annual conference for lovers of all things hypervisor.

Virtualization is a hot topic within the data center. Each week, technology reporters write about the adoption of virtual servers and the related concept of cloud computing. With VMworld merely weeks away, technology PR pros are paying close attention to what those reporters are covering. The theory is that what's written now might provide insight into what will be hot at the conference.

Given Schwartz represents a number of virtualization and cloud computing technology providers, we're watching what's being written collectively. And in the spirit of openness, we're going to share some of what we are seeing on this blog. Along the way, you will get to meet some of the people who are leaders within our data center practice group.

So consider this issue 1 of the "Approach to VMworld." The Schwartz research team has produced a word cloud based on an aggregation of content from the top virtualization and cloud computing bloggers. In future issues, we will talk more about the methodology we used for this research. It's all part of a larger research project into identifying the top bloggers for the data center practice group (watch this space for that research, by the way).

Here's the word cloud the research team produced:

Again, remember the word cloud represents an aggregation of content from leading virtualization and cloud computing blogs. Admittedly, in some cases these exercises are a bit of a Rorschach test.

However, here's what struck me:

-- Management and security are big. Many reporters have written about security and availability as the two major roadblocks for the deployment of cloud computing. Security stands out in what bloggers are writing, and while there's not a direct correlation between management and availability, there's no question that enterprise IT is focused on virtualization management concerns. (I guess it is a bit interesting that "availability" or its derivatives does not show up in this tag cloud.)

-- The word "data" is prominent. Again, I would connect this to the general concerns IT staffs have with data availability, especially when one sees that "data" and "management" are the same size.

-- Pretty nice prevalence of "SaaS," which has for a long time been one definition of cloud computing. Of course, many would argue that the prevalence of that definition is causing confusion over what exactly cloud computing is. SaaS is a service from a cloud, while the purists might more directly relate cloud computing to what is being called PaaS (Platform as a Service) or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

-- Desktop. Is the virtual desktop finally arriving?

-- In the not so surprising category: "VMware" is easy to see, but where is "Microsoft" or "Citrix"?

In summary, if you are selling security for virtual environments or anything related to desktop virtualization, I hope you are planning to go to VMworld. Even if you are not exhibiting, you should send someone for media and analyst meetings (and I know many experts who can help you arrange those meetings).

Of course, I am always interested in your input. What do you see in the word cloud?

Issue 2 of "The Approach to VMworld" will be published here next week.

Posted by Ross Levanto on July 12, 2010 at 10:06 AM