The birth of Rimmergram – the Blog

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Posted on October 15, 2012 by Jane Rimmer

Having guest-blogged on planetvm.net for the past couple of years, I was inspired to create my own blog after meeting @vmcutlip at VMworld San Francisco this year (2012). Tim tweeted me an #ff after VMworld saying, “I love talking to intelligent witty women of tech. You’re an inspiration for many.” This was a huge compliment as I don’t deem myself particularly witty nor intelligent but am I an inspiration for many? I’m not sure, but his words have inspired me to create a blog to cover all things virtual/cloud from a female marketer’s, working in technology, point of view. Whilst I’m a Twitter addict, sometimes 140 characters just isn’t enough I hope to be able to blog frequently about my observations of this exciting technology world in which we live and work.

Keep Calm Fun

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Jane Rimmer

My fellow vExpert, Christian Mohn over at vNinja.net has created some fab “keep calm” art. Some are just genius and others have been inspired by fellow community members. I was honoured that Christian created this one for me and also pleased to see others now using it in some of their blog posts. I decided to use it as my twitter avatar and I got a comment yesterday about my avatar should be a picture of me as SoMe is meant to be social. It was a slightly ‘tongue-in’cheek’ comment, and generally I agree that SoMe avatars should be of the owner because we all want to see who we’re communicating with. But, I LOVE this one so much, and I’m so committed to my role as a VMUG leader, that I have to keep it for a bit longer…… and anyways, I updated my Twitter header to be a pic of myself, so there!

You can find all of them here, enjoy!

I also saw this in a shop window on holiday at Easter, and for those that know me well will say this seems to be appropriate too!

Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform – Momentum Tour

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Jane Rimmer

Today, I had the pleasure of attending the UK-leg of an EMEA press tour conducted by Dheeraj Pandey (CEO), Howard Ting (VP Marketing) and Dirk Marichal (VP EMEA). We were hosted by Declan Waters of Waters Communications, Nutanix’s EMEA PR Agency, at the delightful location of the Cinnamon Club housed in the old Westminster LIbrary.

It was great to catch up with new friends and old in the world of IT media and analysts. Max Cooter, Adrian Bridgwater, Martin Veitch, Manek Dubash and Simon Robinson to name a few. It was also a pleasure to finally meet Chris Mellor, albeit we only had a brief conversation just before lunch commenced.

Howard (L) and Dheeraj (R) kick off the momentum tour press lunch

Howard’s Twitter profile says he’s a storyologist and he is certainly an engaging and captivating speaker discussing the recent announcement of Nutanix’s $80M annualized run rate in just 6 quarters. Dheeraj gave a brief overview and history of Nutanix and Dirk discussed why he joined Nutanix. Simon Robinson then gave his analyst view of the marketplace. A couple of comments that caught my attention were ‘IT is like fashion, what was ‘in’ 30 years ago is back’ and ‘convergence is one word that spans many areas’. All this discussion was taking place while we were served some delicious food and wine.

The floor was then opened up for questions and some discussion took place around the competition, exit strategies etc. It was a great introduction of Nutanix to the gathered guests, all of whom had heard of Nutanix but hadn’t had the chance to engage with its execs. The other quote of the day that I really liked, and for me sums up the ethos of both Dheeraj and Nutanix in general, came during a conversation about going for, or discussing, an IPO too early, it de-focuses companies and employees. Dheeraj’s comment was “It makes employees mercenaries rather than missionaries.”

While we were enjoying our very pleasant surroundings, some of the UK ‘missionaries’, namely Alan Campbell and Rob Tribe, were over at BriForum spreading the Nutanix word on their stand as well as presenting.

Nutanix stand at BriForum London

With Dheeraj and Howard needing to get back to Heathrow for a 4pm flight, so they can attend tomorrow’s Nutanix premiere of the Star Trek, Into Darkness movie, they left a little earlier than the rest of us. I spent some time talking to Martin about some of the other new, exciting companies entering the market. The one at the forefront of my mind, other than Nutanix of course, is Pernix Data, with their Flash Virtualization Platform (FVP), they’ve just closed $20m in an oversubscribed series B round – definitely another one to watch!

Thanks to Dheeraj, Howard, Dirk and Declan for an excellent day.

London VMware Forum – May 2nd 2013

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Jane Rimmer

I attended last week’s VMware Forum at Wembley, staffing the VMUG booth. As a leader of London VMUG, I was asked by Jean Williams from VMware if I could volunteer to staff the booth to promote our local VMUG and to recruit new members. Our chair, Alaric Davies, was also able to attend for the day, and it was great to see a contingent of our members stopping by and chatting to prospective members about the value of joining London VMUG, including Luke Munro, Ricky El-Qasem, Simon Eady and Simon Davies. Although we only had a small booth, we were very busy during the breaks between the keynote and the break out sessions. I think we must’ve signed up over 50 new members, but the results of the scanning we did will be divulged later this week.

Having attended last year, the layout was much more conducive in the Bobby Moore Suite to networking and chatting – previously it was crammed packed with lots of sponsors and bigger booths. This year VMware UK marketing had decided upon a tad fewer sponsors with smaller booths to allow for better movement around the hall.

Joe Baguley – a tremendous supporter of all things VMUG, in particular our London meeting and our national UK user conference – stopped by to say “Hi” after his keynote and to confirm that the 21^st November is already in his diary! I had the pleasure of sitting in on Joe’s keynote earlier in the day; as ever it was informative and entertaining with snails, kittens and chickens making their usual appearance Other VMware VMUG supporters, such as our honorary committee member Martyn Storey, Mark Stockham, Matt Piercy and Brian Gammage were at the event and was great to catch up with them all, albeit briefly.

It was also great to see old friends Roger Baskerville from PHD Virtual and Scott Bennett from Liquidware Labs – we all used to work together in the good ol’ days of Vizioncore (pre-Quest and pre-Dell!) I also caught up with Heather Lock from NetApp, Heather used to work for me during my tenure at Citrix and I hopefully have convinced her to get NetApp to sponsor the London VMUG as we’ve never had them sponsor our local meeting

Two of the companies I work with, Nutanix and VMTurbo were both in attendance, with Nutanix basking in the glory of having just been announced as a Gartner Cool Vendor and VMTurbo’s newly hired VP Worldwide Sales, Chris Reisig, attending his first VMware Forum, in between conducting interviews for newly created sales positions in the UK.

All in all, a busy, enjoyable day - great for networking and great for signing up new members. However, not too sure there was any real ‘meat’ for the attendees in the sessions, some of whom I spoke to said the same, good for networking but nothing really new.

Don’t forget to mark your diaries for the next London VMUG, 4^th July and for our UK User Conference 21^st November, all details can be found at www.vmug.com !

London VMUG 25th April – a Rimmary

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Jane Rimmer

As ever, we had a great meeting at the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry last Thursday, 25th April. In his usual endearing style our chair, Alaric Davies, kicked off proceedings and, as usual, asked for a show of hands for first timers. Interestingly as ever, about a fifth of the attendees were vNoobies. It’s encouraging to see many new faces, as well as our stalwart members.

We had a great selection of sponsors, VMTurbo as Gold, Nimble Storage and Veeam as Silver and for the first time, Atlantis Computing was our lab sponsor. Being on the organising committee it’s hard to attend many sessions, but I can categorically state the best session of the day in terms of member feedback and tweets was Greg Ferro on his “Don’t Do Virtual Networking, Do Cloud Networking” presentation – engaging, thought provoking and somewhat controversial by all accounts!! With Hans De Leenheer from Veeam tweeting:

Kudos indeed to Greg and to London VMUG too!

We were well represented by VMware as usual, with sessions on vCAC, Horizon, SDN and Robbie Jerrom presenting a Puppet Primer. Also a big thanks to our community presenters; Barry Coatsworth, Gregg Robertson & Darren Woollard, Lee Harris and our very own Stu Thompson.

We had a couple of overseas guests too, demonstrating the draw that London VMUG has in the wider community; Shane Williford from Kansas City, Missouri and Javier Larrea from the Spanish VMUG it was great to host you in London.

As always, many thanks to our sponsors – we can’t do these meetings without you! Mark your diary for our next meeting – July 4th, same time, same place Don’t forget presos will be available on box.net/londonug.

I’ll also be at the VMware Forum in Wembley this Thursday 2nd May, staffing the VMUG booth, stop by and say ‘Hi’.

Great line up for April 25th – Next London VMUG

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Jane Rimmer

Can’t believe we’re already in April – the Easter break just flew by and now we’re gearing up for the Q2 London VMUG – busy, busy, busy! The agenda went live just before Easter, and we’ve got a great line up of speakers, both from VMware and the community, and from our sponsors; VMTurbo, Nimble Storage, Veeam and Atlantis, who is sponsoring our labs this time. Our day starts with registration and coffee from 8.30, with the first session starting at 10am sharp. We conclude, as usual, with vBeers at The Pavilion End.

Apart from an awesome agenda, we will also have a special guest visiting us from ‘across the pond’, Mr Shane Williford aka @coolsport00 – welcome in advance Shane! We’re also excited to have Gregg Ferro aka @etherealmind speak, since my involvement with the London VMUG I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting Gregg, so looking forward to that! Remember to register here and if you can’t make this one, our next meeting is planned for July 4th, so put that in your diary now!