Tag Congress

Let me start off by saying, WOW. I mean Mega-WOW.  If you haven’t watched the Keynote from 26AUG2014 yet you definitely ought to.   This VMworld and this keynote focused on what has been taken for granted within the community and the virtualization space for years from a corporate perspective.   This VMworld has focused all eyes and attention on the COMMUNITY.   When the executives of VMware get up and say that the community matters, that the VMware Users Group organization is not only visible but also important to the mission and the success of their business; They are finally getting it! Today as it stands the VMUG organization has over 100,000 members. If you’re not one of those members, you should be. And if you are one of those members, continue to get involved, grow, rock! 

But there have been so many other points which were hit on, discussed, leveraged.  Down below is a breakdown of the items which they mentioned and respectively discussed, including where you can sign up for the Beta programs for some items.   This is only a small portion of the products which will be unveiled, updated, released, so on and so forth!  (There will be more references in the coming days)

This as a whole breaks down just a small section of what was discussed at the Keynote (General Session), What products were mentioned, and some little ones you ought to know about which were not directly mentioned THERE but instead were referenced elsewhere and are now able to be talked about.

• Policy as a Service (Congress – Being worked on by Tim Hinrichs and Peter Balland, Scott Lowe pointed them out to me at the CTO Booth.
• Mentioned briefly in the KeyNote but the further integrations and validation of the Government Cloud First Program – FedRAMP (Which is huge)
• A serious commitment to the Open Computing Project (OCP) joining as a Gold Member

There is much more which will come from this, not only announced today but the outliers and little enhancements (Which I’ll discuss in the next few blogs)

A look at some of the products featured today 26 AUG 2014!

Hybrid Cloud

• vCloud Air Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand (Private Beta) sign up
• VMware vCloud Air Object Storage (Qualified Beta) sign up

Software-Define Your Data Center

• VMware Integrated OpenStack
• VMware NSX™ 6.1
• VMware vCloud Suite 5.8

SDDC Management

• VMware vRealize™ Suite
• VMware vRealize™ Air™ Automation (Beta) sign up

Rapidly Scale Your Infrastructure

• VMware EVO: Rail
• EVO:RAIL announced partners: Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Inspur, Net One Systems and SuperMicro. More to follow!

Mobile!

• VMware Workspace Suite

The point is, this is just a taste of more to come.  Look forward to Video interviews with Engineers, Architects, Founders and more on some of the game changers in the industry, as well as highlighting particularly cool technologies, and doing my best to avoid the companies with crappy products. <3

Wow, another bombshell dropped us on by Congress! The clause that Small Businesses in Defense (and other) areas for a guaranteed budget allocation has been squelched.

This previous instance set some serious precedence with no end in sight.

(re: “Preferential Treatment” for minorities called unconstitutional a court has ruled)

So, fresh from the halls of Congress is this little gem:

“Small business program declared unconstitutional”

As Nick Wakeman has had to say,

I think this story is just beginning. Small business advocates will likely be on Capitol Hill explaining ways that Congress can address the court’s ruling. Some will argue that many socio-economic groups still are discriminated against. Another argument is that small business programs foster economic growth.

We definitely need that now.

Perhaps this will drive innovation in these smaller businesses in order to be more agile, nimble and able to take those monies from big business.   But without any major reform in addition to these new lines of ‘reform’ initiated from Congress and declaring things “unconstitutional” we’ll be stuck with more of the same, Big Business Wins, small businesses collapse and Monopolies all around!    The question is, who will be the Thimble and who will be the Car.

Good luck out there small businesses. It’s definitely an uphill battle from here.

These two articles came across my desk this morning:

In the News: DOD loses minority contractor rule

Court strikes down DOD’s minority contractor rule

Basically put, this was a law put in place calling for minority-owned companies to receive 5% of Defense contracting dollars.

What did Congress have to say on this issue?

The court ruled that since Congress did not have strong enough evidence of discrimination against minority contractors by the Defense Department, the law violates the Constitution’s equal rights protection.

Or to quote:

“Because Congress did not have a ‘strong basis in evidence’ upon which to conclude that DOD was a passive participant in pervasive, nationwide racial discrimination … the statute fails strict scrutiny,” Chief Judge Paul R. Michel wrote in Tuesday’s decision.

So, what does this mean for the future?

Technically on paper this means that all qualified defense contractors will be able to put up for bid to compete on projects – and then the “Lowest Price” effectively will win every time.

This will certainly raise the chances that not only will smaller defense contractors find it harder to compete with “WalMart” sized defense contractors, but we’ll see the already shrinking budgets being delivered to an even smaller minority of majority contractors.

Only time will tell whether the court ruling on its ‘lack of evidence’ will continue to be so apparent.