Just under two months ago I left my role at Xtravirt and started life as a contractor. At that point I was content to live the contractor life for a year or so and see what opportunities came along. I didn’t expect opportunity to come along so quickly!

TLDR; I’m joining VMware as part of the PSO NSX practice!

I’ve seen VMware as the place that I would end up working for a while now, having worked as a customer and a partner it seemed like a logical progression. And NSX is a rocket-ship that is gathering speed and momentum, it’s viewed by many as critical to the future of VMware as the public cloud begins to eat the more traditional datacenter. With so much focus on NSX at VMworld this year, I am convinced of this.

I was really blessed to get onto an early NSX Technical Boot Camp all the way back in June 2014, and I’ve spent the last few years working with vRA and NSX, with the emphasis placed more on the vRA side. This role will see me shift the emphasis onto NSX, but keep the cloud and automation skills warm too. NSX comes alive when it’s automated with vRA, and vRA becomes so much more when it’s automating NSX.

In the past I’ve said that the company that nails cross-cloud connectivity first will win, and I think that NSX is getting to a level of maturity and functionality that means VMware will be that winner. I also said that I believe we will see NSX underpinning connectivity between multiple public and private clouds, orchestrated and managed by vRA as a “broker of clouds”. I think that we’re seeing that begin to happen now with VMware’s Cross Cloud strategy, as NSX underpins connectivity for VMware Cloud on AWS, and they begin to roll out NSX Cloud to other providers.

So, my first day at VMware will be the week after VMworld Barcelona. I am very much looking forward to joining an excellent team in the NSX practice, I know that I have a lot to learn and some awesome people to learn it from – but as a friend said when we were talking about the opportunity – “take the job that scares you most!”