VMworld in Las Vegas is half over, but the information flow is continuing unabated.
There are 20,000 attendees this year, with over 100 different sessions covering all things VMware. It is an astounding organizational effort, and VMware and its co-sponsors should be congratulated on putting on such a great event.
But the reason we’re here is learn, so the days are busy with one session after another.
VMware has put a lot of effort into building their partner ecosystem, to the point where over 1/3 of the attendees this year are partners. While most of these are systems integrators and re-sellers, a fair number of them are service provider partners.
There are 10 US-based VMware-based cloud service providers exhibiting at the show, and many more attending the general sessions. At one session, I learned that New Zeland, with a population of 4.5 million, has over 20 IaaS service providers.
I was embarrassed to admit that despite a population of 34 million, you can count the number of Canadia IaaS cloud service providers on one hand.
VMware sponsored an after-hours party for Canadians, and several hundred people showed up. But most of these were end-users who use VMware to virtualize and manage their own internal IT infrastructure. Very few have what you can call an “private cloud”.
I keep wondering why Canadians are so reluctant when it comes to cloud computing. We have seen first hand that cloud is a tough sell in many Canadian companies, but there is a growing number of companies looking to the cloud for business opportunities and operational efficiency.
When I worked in the early days of wireless, Canadians were considered years ahead of the US in both the business of wireless and in the adoption of cell phones. We were often invited to talk at US mobile industry events to tell they what their future looked like.
Cloud computing seems to be the opposite. We sit north of the board and gaze longingly at the diversity, growth and robustness of the US cloud business.
At Canadian Cloud Computing we’re not standing still waiting. We constantly learning and evolving our cloud, and we’ll be ready once Canadian companies start to see the benefits of cloud computing.
Wally.
Wally Kowal is the president and founder of Canadian Cloud Computing
