It was great for VMware Explore 2023 to be back in Las Vegas. I am sure attendance was higher than last year, but still not as many as before the pandemic. It’s definitely on the right track for continuing to grow. The Venetian is an amazing venue. It was nice not having to walk across a city block to attend sessions as it was with the Moscone Center. Though, I still, somehow, ended up with about the same amount of steps as last year. I really like everything with the Explore theme and I thought it was more embraced this year.

I have an article about vSphere announcements and vSAN announcements so I will focus on other areas in this article. As expected, AI was the main topic during the general session. I was impressed with VMware’s announcement of VMware Private AI. It makes a lot of sense to be able to have a platform to utilize AI, but without giving up your privacy. Many companies are not adapting quickly to AI because they see it as a security risk. You could be essentially giving up your data if you don’t own and control the AI model. With Private AI, that will not be an issue. Another announcement was VMware NSX+, which is another addition that makes sense. Customers can have one cloud console to manage NSX for both on-prem and cloud. That means consistent policies and management in one interface to keep VMware environments uniform.

The Hub had the best setup this year. Everything community related was in one big room. It felt too disjointed in past years. VMTN, Virtually Speaking Podcast, VMware Rewards, and a few other groups all had a setup in The Hub, and it was close to the expo.

The food was not as good as last year. Two days out of four days for lunch was sandwiches and salads. Vegas has great food so no one wants multiple days of sandwiches. I hope VMware can step it up next year.

The expo area is always a favorite of mine. It was nice to have a lot of seating and gaming options around and in the expo. Though, many vendor booths were a bit scaled back compared to last year. I hope vendors see how great this year’s event was and will be able to increase their event budgets next year. There were a lot of nice giveaways for watching a short presentation, such as Nintendo Switches from Tintri, Lego sets from IBM, and tablets from Lenovo. I also need to give a shout out to Cohesity as they always deliver for vExperts with a nice gift.

Be on the look out for more VMware Explore events this year as there’s more events this year than ever before with four more events. These events will be in Barcelona, Singapore, São Paulo, and Tokyo. It will be exciting to see what information VMware will announce at these events. I am also excited to see the US side will be back at The Venetian in Vegas next year.