By the second full day of VMworld, I noticed two discernable themes (I'm sure most of you who are at VMworld probably noticed them days ago!).

VMware is really playing up the customer focus. The first thing you notice about the "décor" of VMworld is that there are all of these cartoons of real world customers. Being an HP person, I have to read each name and each company to see if they are HP customers - I'm happy to report that at least 50% of them are ones that I know are HP customers. However, the customer focus goes beyond the cartoons. There are customer testimonials before the general sessions (as well as an arguably more amusing customer video before the HP keynote). I thought the ultimate was that they even brought a customer out on stage to do a demonstration of a new technology. Note to VMware: that is way more interesting to watch than an engineer dragged out of a lab.

The other thing is VMware's focus on "Virtual Datacenter OS" or VDC-OS for short. This is VMware's new way of describing what most customers have finally learned to call "VMware Infrastructure". I know people are often resistant to change - I myself went kicking and screaming from the old "Virtual Infrastructure Node" naming to "VMware Infrastructure", but I attribute that to being old (just ask my kids). In talking to people today, I just don't think that they are buying into VDC-OS, though. In many ways, calling it an OS is selling the technology short. It is very different from what I would consider an operating system, and it has so many other centralized features that one wouldn't expect to see in an OS (certainly OS vendors brand features of that ilk something other than an OS).

One more day of the conference, but it will likely start off slow since people will be at the partying late tonight.