Wait……What……Say That Again Colotti? Yes, you heard it right I am not joking. After VMworld US 2012 I decided to take on a role that has some incredible potential to be bleeding edge. After the past couple years doing vCloud and helping folks with everything vCloud, it seemed time for a change. I was presented the chance to be part of a small, focussed team that will help not only sell Nicira to current OpenStack and other customers, but also doing what the CoE does best by solving the problems for the field, creating Alpha IP around Nicira, and helping train the field on the solution.
Now before you all go flooding my email with questions about it, trust me I have little idea about it yet and I am coming up to speed myself. I have spent the last week just trying to understand the technology, architecture, how it works, etc. I’m the newbie here, but I am a fast learner and there is a bit of a curve. For the first few months I will be playing SE while others continue to get ramped up including some more SE’s. Eventually I will be working with the small original team to start folding some of the learning back into the field as training, Alpha IP and all the normal things I have done for vCloud. This time it will be for Nicira and Software Defined Networking. Of course as we continue to move forward I am sure I will come back to the ‘Cloud Side’ to help specifically with Nicira and SDN on the VMware vCloud Suite.
I can say that having to learn all new technology including other Hypervisiors where Nicira works itself is a learning curve. Heck, I’ve been a VMware guy for years so loading things like KVM, and XENServer in nested VM’s in my lab so I can run the NVP is just weird! Needless to say I am still here I will still be with VMware, just less focussed on cloud and 100% focussed on Nicira and Software Defined Networking. Keep your eyes peeled as I discover new things about this space and start writing about them. Maybe this also warrants a theme change to usher in the new role. I know myself and the other three guys are up to this new challenge. Hey just think about all the cool stuff the four of us can present at VMworld 2013!