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Viva VMworld

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Most of the preparations are set for VMworld next week in Las Vegas.  I’ll be down there from Monday through Thursday.  I know that this will be a very exciting show, just based on the announcements that VMware will be making (wish I could tell you more, but not gonna happen till next week…).

I have caught wind of a number of companies that will be making announcements at VMworld next week, including:

  • VMware  (Duh!)
  • Cisco (very exciting announcement, but I can’t say more…)
  • IBM
  • Intel
  • NEC
  • Many, many others both big and not so.

It will be both a fun and hectic week.  All three of my Global Accounts will be attending the show in various sized troupes.  So, between my meetings with them, networking with colleagues, attending the Keynotes, browsing through the Solutions Exchange, and jumping in on a few sessions, I’ll be trying to post as many updates from VMworld as possible.   You’ll be able to find them here under the VMworld 2008 topic as well as via Twitter to the VMWorld Twitter Account and/or the VMworld Hashtag (all depends on how much I have to say… 🙂  ).

If you’re at the show, let me know.  It’s all about networking!

Oh yeah, and I’ll have my camera in tow…make sure to smile.

(Disclosure: I am currently employed at VMware as a Global Accounts Solutions Consultant)

Yammer Innovates Twitter

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Yesterday I logged in to check out Yammer, the Twitter for Business.  What Yammer has created is the innovation that Twitter was not able to:  a way to create social media tool for businesses and come up with a business model to charge for the service.

Yammer is essentially a channel-ized twitter.  But the channel is only other people in your business; they force that by using the domain of your email address to create or add you to a channel.  Now, your status updates are only seen by your co-workers.  And if you start to carry on a conversation in your channel, you can view messages based on threads.

Where I think it gets interesting is their business model.  Offer the service for free, but then charge the company for an Admin privileges on the channel.  An Admin can brand the channel for the company, control members of the channel and even provide security by restricting the channel so you can only log in from the corporate network.

The problem with Yammer?  It’s yet another social communication channel.  The whole social networking services have become way to fractured.  Too many places to network.  Not enough time accomplishing anything.  To use the phrase “social not-working” is getting more an more applicable. (on that point, Yammer was developed by the Geni team…how’s that for not working.)  The advantage of a service like FriendFeed is that it is one place to check all your social networking feeds, even if you can only reply back via FriendFeed.

The openess of the web needs to be extended so that something like Yammer can be a piece of infrastructure that can be plugged into multiple other services.  One think I like about Twitter is that there are 3rd party interfaces.  I have enough web browser windows open on my desktop as it is, I need less not more.  As fredrickvan tweeted today, the key is keeping your social touch points in control.  While Yammer figured out a way to make money off of the status message, it’s just another social touch point that we have to manage.