VMblog:  As a VMworld 2019 sponsor, how can people find you this year? 

Dinesh: VMworld is an important event for us to share business strategy and demonstrate technological innovations to accelerate Data-driven infrastructure for joint customers of Hitachi Vantara and VMware. Hitachi Vantara's team of experts on DataOps, hybrid cloud, storage, converged, containers and data protection technologies will be at booth #1435 to help customers realize their DataOps Advantage by making right data available to right processes at right time.   

Hitachi executives will be available to engage with customers and partners. More information can be found on the Hitachi Community on how to book meetings with executives. It is a great opportunity to connect with senior leadership of Hitachi Vantara, which is a strategic partner to a vast majority of Fortune 2000 businesses.  

VMblog:  Is there anything unique about this year's booth setup?  Do you have a theme? 

Dinesh: Hitachi Vantara is at the forefront of innovating cutting edge technologies that make storing, enriching, activating and monetizing the human, business and machine data for data-driven organizations. We are geared to lead customers to embrace their DataOps Advantage that connects data consumers with data creators to accelerate collaboration and digital innovation. We are excited to introduce to VMworld attendees our DataOps enabler solutions in San Francisco and Barcelona.

VMblog:  Can you give readers a few reasons why your product or service is considered unique? 

Dinesh: Hitachi Vantara, with over fifty years of experience in delivering information technology and operational technology, is uniquely positioned to deliver DataOps Advantage for businesses that look to maximize the return of their business data.   

Decades of experience in partnering with over 85 of Fortune 100 organization in accelerating their digital transformation helps us innovate and design solutions that accelerate cloud strategy and realizes the full benefits of DataOps. 

Since last VMworld, we have closely collaborated with VMware, Intel and Cisco to co-innovate solutions that make data visible from edge to cloud and help optimize application landscape for hybrid environments. 

VMblog:  Why should a VMworld attendee add you to their MUST SEE list?

Dinesh: We will be discussing challenges, opportunities, and technologies of acquiring, storing, analyzing, and activating data so our customers can innovate. Solutions to real-world challenges of DataOps for enterprise applications, governance, and operational agility will be demonstrated and be available on the hands-on lab. 

Attendees will learn how to unleash the power of your data that allows the right information to flow freely to the right people, in the right place and at the right time. They will attain competitive advantage by providing the entire data team (decision-makers, influencers, operations, architects, engineers, stewards, analysts, and bots) the immediate access to the application, data and data-driven insights to make sound business decisions. 

VMblog:  Can you give VMblog readers a sneak peek as to what you will be showing off at your booth this year?  What should attendees expect to see and hear at your booth?

Dinesh: A range of exciting enterprise and cloud solutions will be on display. 

• Apps and Cloud migration will demonstrate how Hitachi enables you to migrate your applications from a Data Center to the Cloud as servers or as containers in a secure, easy, and automated way. It will show how Hitachi's advanced tools automate provisioning and management of new and existing workloads or applications in the cloud.

• Automated Hybrid Cloud solution will showcase our hybrid cloud capabilities where we bring together VMware's Enterprise-ready Hybrid Cloud Management Platform (CMP) together with Hitachi's Converged and Hyperconverged Infrastructure and comprehensive tools to not only deliver enhanced private cloud capability but also Day one and day two operations across private, public and hybrid clouds using VMware and AWS technology.

• High-performance all-NVMe hyperconverged IT platform, enabled by Intel Optane, will be on display. It multiplies the performance and reduces the latency, accelerating the apps and improving price/performance.

• Automated data center area will show how businesses can deliver advanced datacenter capabilities simply and easily using Hitachi's rich management tooling ecosystem with API driven integration.

• Storage ops and data protection will round out the demos, showcasing how to define and monitor SLOs and ensure continuous availability of applications and data. We show how workloads and applications are protected automatically from initial deployment (day1) and how users can take advantage of self-service capabilities (day 2) for ad-hoc backup and copy services. 

VMblog:  How does your company and product fit within the VMware ecosystem?

Dinesh: Being a Global Elite Technology Partner and Early Design Partner, as well as an OEM, Hitachi engages with VMware to design and develop enterprise solutions that help improve business agility and reduce operational complexity. Co-engineered and co-developed software-defined data center solutions provide flexibility to align IT resources with business changes and reduce costs of IT operations. Tight integration with VMware's suite of cloud automation, provisioning and migration tools, allows joint customers to develop and deploy applications in the most suitable data center or public cloud.  

VMblog:  What are you looking forward to most at VMworld this year?

Dinesh: It will be my tenth VMworld event across US and Europe editions. I look forward to engaging with attendees in enriching discussions around DataOps, hybrid cloud, data center modernization, and hyperconvergence. Having deeper conversations with customers on their pressing business challenges, many a time accentuated by legacy IT operations models, and designing solutions makes me keep coming back to the event every year. Opportunity to connect with industry peers and learn about new industry trends is the icing on the cake. 

VMblog:  This isn't your first VMworld event as a sponsor.  What keeps you coming back?

Dinesh: Hitachi Vantara has been a key sponsor and regular exhibitor at VMworld US and EMEA events for many years. As critical virtualization and cloud computing event, VMworld provides us exciting opportunity to demonstrate our breakthrough technologies to a large relevant audience. Partnering with alliance partners including VMware, Intel, Cisco to develop innovative data center and cloud solutions to help customers embrace DataOps. 

VMblog:  Do you remember your first VMworld event?  What can you tell us about it?  What memories stand out?

Dinesh: During my first VMworld in 2014, public cloud was still a new concept and customers were dipping their toe's with caution. I recall VMware bringing to the market their public cloud, vCloud Hybrid Services to cater to the emerging marketplace. Since then enterprise technology landscape has changed with VMware and AWS joining hands to jointly provide true workload mobility with VMware cloud solution. Hitachi provides hybrid cloud solution to bring the best of private and public clouds with Unified Compute Platform RS (UCP RS). It brings together all elements of the software-defined data center to deliver a turnkey integrated solution to modernize data center and integrate with public clouds including AWS and IBM cloud for seamless workload mobility. 

Containers, nascent innovation coming from Silicon Valley in 2014, have become an integral part of enterprise application development and deployment strategy. Hitachi, in partnership with VMware, is playing an important role in solving the critical challenge of providing persistent storage volumes, which could be a challenge to container adoption. 

VMblog:  What would you say to prospective attendees who are thinking about attending VMworld but aren't sure if it's worth it or not?

Dinesh: If you make a living by working on any of data center or cloud technologies including compute, storage, networking, security, public cloud, WAN, encryption, backup, VMworld is a must-attend event. Updates on industry trends, preview into latest and greatest technological  innovation, networking opportunities more than justify investments. Attendees have an opportunity to engage with comprehensive VMware partner ecosystem to work toward their business needs.

VMblog:  Attendees always enjoy a good trade show tchotchke.  Are you guys giving away anything special or interesting this year?

Dinesh: As a token of appreciation for attendees to visit Hitachi Vantara booth #1435, we have planned a series of exciting giveaways. We will be raffling away XBOX gaming consoles for gamers and fitness tracker watches for fitness enthusiasts. A few lucky attendees will be walking away with Wireless Bluetooth/waterproof earbuds and Amazon Fire Stick 4K.

Letting a secret out on your blog ... we have planned to reward a few walk-ins with cool Hitachi socks to Get the Red On!

VMblog:  Does your company have any speaking sessions during the show?  If so, can you give us the who, what, when and where?

Dinesh: We have a couple of breakout sessions at VMworld US. Please join Best Practices for Cloud Migration and Acceleration session on Tuesday, August 27, 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM to learn tips for successful migrations to public clouds and ongoing operations. A comprehensive multi-cloud strategy requires managing costs, ensuring security compliance, maintaining consistency and governance across platforms. Session will have challenges faced by customers embarking on their cloud journey. Hitachi experts will share insights from helping organizations learn how to make better decisions with application re-deployment on a public or private cloud platform. 

Hitachi Vantara will join panel discussion VMware vSAN Platform Ecosystem - Who's who and why? on Tuesday, August 27, 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM along with VMware and other vSAN partners to discuss our vSAN-powered hyperconverged solutions that have seen steadily growing adoption for a variety of use cases and scale. The session will highlight Hitachi's approach to solving customer's application requirements for performance, availability, management, and cost. 

Both sessions will provide you insights into Hitachi's continuous innovation in hybrid cloud and hyperconvergence that make our customers more relevant to their users and stakeholders. Seats are filling fast, early registration is strongly recommended. 

We have planned a few short and impactful presentations at Hitachi booth#1435. No prior registration needed! 

• Simplified Public Cloud Migration           
• Accelerated Cloud with vRealize
• High-Performance Hyperconvergence
• Manage Storage Ops While Playing Golf
• Do More with VMware Integrations
• Protect Your Data from Edge to Cloud           
• Metro Storage Cluster for Tier 1 Apps           
• VDI Made Easy
• Adaptive Solutions for Converged Infrastructure