4 ms·

> I only guess they didn't want to compete against themselves, which is understandable but shortsighted I work on vCloud Air (VMware's IaaS offering) and this

> I only guess they didn't want to compete against themselves, which is understandable but shortsighted I work on vCloud Air (VMware's IaaS offering) and this is just a guess (since I wasn't here at the time) but I imagine it wasn't about "competing against themselves." It's easy to sit here in 2015 and say getting into IaaS early should have been obvious but that's ignoring the reality of what IT departments were saying they wanted. In 2008 88% of IT buyers preferred on-premise deployment, by 2014 that had declined to 13%[1]. FWIW early access to vCloud Hybrid Service (the original name of vCloud Air) was available in June 2013[2] and obviously something like this isn't put together overnight. [1] http://www.softwareadvice.com/buyerview/deployment-preference-report-2014/ http://www.softwareadvice.com/buyerview/deployment-preferenc... [2] http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-vcloud-hybrid-service-052113.html http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-vcloud-hybri...

kgilpin 11y ago
Personally I believe that the best insights don't come from customers. As Jobs said, "Customers don't know what they want" http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/10/17/five-dangerous-lessons-to-learn-from-steve-jobs/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/10/17/five-danger... People working in IT data centers didn't work with cloud much, so they didn't understand the advantages. It's very dangerous to do product design in an echo chamber.
- frostmatthew 11y ago
  > As Jobs said, "Customers don't know what they want" I see (and somewhat agree with) your point, but you're quoting/linking an article titled "Five Dangerous Lessons to Learn From Steve Jobs" that states just before the first bullet "here are some of the worst lessons to learn from Steve Jobs" A better quote may be PG's "Make something people want"[1] - and if ~90% of the people you sell to are saying they want on-prem I'm not sure how (without clairvoyance or hubris) you can say for sure "nah, they're all wrong." Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are much larger than VMware and can afford to put a lot more resources behind things that may never bear fruit - VMW had $1.8B in revenue in 2008[2], MSFT had $60B[3]. [1] http://paulgraham.com/good.html http://paulgraham.com/good.html [2] http://ir.vmware.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-09-38030&CIK=1124610 http://ir.vmware.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-09-38030... [3] https://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/TrendedHistory/AnnualStatements.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Tre...
mc32 11y ago
I understand hindsight is 20/20, but they should have been testing this alternative service, at least internally, with the other divisions, to see how well they could compete, if this thing caught on they could be somewhat ready. It's not that they need to predict the market, they should try for contingencies, what if that iaas does take off? Let's not get caught flat-footed.

kgilpin 11y ago

Personally I believe that the best insights don't come from customers. As Jobs said, "Customers don't know what they want" http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/10/17/five-dangerous-lessons-to-learn-from-steve-jobs/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/10/17/five-danger... People working in IT data centers didn't work with cloud much, so they didn't understand the advantages. It's very dangerous to do product design in an echo chamber.

frostmatthew 11y ago
> As Jobs said, "Customers don't know what they want" I see (and somewhat agree with) your point, but you're quoting/linking an article titled "Five Dangerous Lessons to Learn From Steve Jobs" that states just before the first bullet "here are some of the worst lessons to learn from Steve Jobs" A better quote may be PG's "Make something people want"[1] - and if ~90% of the people you sell to are saying they want on-prem I'm not sure how (without clairvoyance or hubris) you can say for sure "nah, they're all wrong." Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are much larger than VMware and can afford to put a lot more resources behind things that may never bear fruit - VMW had $1.8B in revenue in 2008[2], MSFT had $60B[3]. [1] http://paulgraham.com/good.html http://paulgraham.com/good.html [2] http://ir.vmware.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-09-38030&CIK=1124610 http://ir.vmware.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-09-38030... [3] https://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/TrendedHistory/AnnualStatements.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Tre...

mc32 11y ago

I understand hindsight is 20/20, but they should have been testing this alternative service, at least internally, with the other divisions, to see how well they could compete, if this thing caught on they could be somewhat ready. It's not that they need to predict the market, they should try for contingencies, what if that iaas does take off? Let's not get caught flat-footed.