A rummour abounds that VMworld Europe is going to change its date from its historic location (in Q2) to be just after VMworld US (Q3). I’m not quite sure about the rationale behind this – but here’s my stab. Firstly, the trip to the US has always been a financial big ask for some in EMEA – not least an absolute killer from a distance/flight/jet-lag perspective. Secondly, it become increasingly the case that the EU event has occasionally been a somewhat of a damp squib because of VMware not wishing to fire its big guns prior to the premier event. The launch of vSphere4 this year was a case in point…

So on the upside it should now be possible for EMEA folks not to have to journey to the US to hear the good stuff, but instead attend a more local EU event instead. It the current climate makes sense. My only concern is by putting them so close together it will be increasingly difficult for folks like me to justify attending both. So what does that mean? Do I drop my attendence to VMworld US or EU – and does that mean that both events will be deminished by competing too much against each other? Will the US event naturally dominate, with the EU event seen as its poorer sister…? I certainly hope not. The EU has been in the vanguard of virtualization with countries like Germany, the Netherlands and the UK some of the earliest to virtualize before some in the US had become aware of the winds of change…

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 3:01 pm and is filed under VMworld. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.