Announcement:

Effective March 1st 2010, I am joining the PSO team at VMware as the first Senior Consultant covering the Middle-east region.

Now that the word is out, I guess everyone reading these lines will say something like: “Here we go again, another blogger joining another vendor. The trend continues.”

Well, you might be right at some level. I am a blogger. VMware is a vendor. What else would be different?

What is different here, at least in my opinion, is the timeline and circumstances that this whole story developed through. My original plan was to write a pretty huge post and tell you everything about it. How the dream started when I was watching the VMworld 2008 opening keynote. How the opportunity represented itself from the least expected way. How I went through the longest, most challenging and exciting interview process I have ever experienced throughout my career.

I said “my original plan” because I had to come up with an alternative. Unfortunately I’m just being hyper-sensitive now towards anything that I want to say or disclose about VMware. You know this feeling when you start in a new place, where you don’t know initially what you can and can’t talk about in public? Hopefully it will be a short period before I start getting the essence of the VMware internal culture and be more comfortable to share with you my experience in this great place. Until then, all what I can tell you is that I was approached by Duncan Epping back in July 2009 for an opportunity in the PSO team.

Yes, it was July 2009, before there was even a trend in the first place. This huge gap between now and then wasn’t really up to me or to VMware. It’s the complicated system of sponsorship that we have in this part of the world and all its related formalities. I was crazy patient, and they were very determined to have me. But I’m not here to bore you about these details. What I want to do instead is to acknowledge the huge efforts by Duncan throughout the process. I would have loved to talk in details about that, but again, I find myself in the same situation where I don’t know if I can elaborate more or not. Regardless of all that, let me take a quick moment here to tell you about this true legend, and why I pride myself on being referred to VMware by him.

I don’t look at Duncan as the number one blogger in the community (three times in a row and counting), or as someone who has an unmatchable visibility and influence (check his IOPS post for example), or even as someone who has a great deal of respect and admiration from everyone I’ve known in (and outside) the community. It’s something completely different than all that. It is simply his “passion” for the technology that really differentiate him from the crowd. This is the one thing that always stands out to me about Duncan.

I know brilliant people, I mean literally “brilliant” people in our community with an incredible experience and knowledge that I might never even achieve any time in my future career. But I have never (I repeat: never) saw someone among those people whom I thought for one second to have more passion than me for the virtualization technology in general or VMware in particular. Duncan was (and still) the only exception to that. Every little blog post, email or even tweet I see from him, I always see someone who has passion and dedication for what he does more than anyone I have ever known.

That is why I will always look up to him for inspiration, and that is why he will always be my number one in VMware.

Now that I’m approaching the end of my post, I’d like to take this chance to thank Deepak Narain for his continued support and for sticking up for me. I wouldn’t have reached this place without all your help, even for the very little logistic things that you were voluntarily taking care of to get me on board as soon as possible. I’d like also to thank Vegard Sagbakken, Frank Denneman and Aaron White. They were among the people in VMware who knew about my delayed recruitment process, and were very kind to follow up with me on its progress.

Lastly, and most importantly, to my dear blog readers: it was through your encouragement and positive feedback that I was able to keep this blog running, and it was through this blog that I got the visibility and exposure for VMware to hire me. With that said, I will always do my very best to keep my content here as unique, informative and educational as possible. Everything you’ve seen and liked on this blog up till this moment was completely gathered on my own, I didn’t even have a partner access or any source of information other than what was available to the public. Imagine the giant leap that I’m taking now where I get to read, learn, try and witness everything directly from the source. I am so excited to start this new journey, and I promise you that I’ll always deliver higher quality posts to you.

Oh, and in case you didn’t get the joke in the subject, the VMware employees are not entitled to the vExpert award!

P.S. This was a last minute thing, and it’s just for fun: (click here)