Following all the anticipation, the kick off to the VMworld conference this week was slightly disappointing. And after speaking to customers and analysts at the event, I know many feel the same.

A full audience awaited the new VMware president and chief executive, Paul Maritz. It was the ex-Microsoft employee's first major presentation to customers, partners and press since he joined VMware earlier this year and replaced founder Diane Greene, and he had a chance to put right the stories that have circulated on how Greene's departure caused share prices to plummet and important senior executives to step down. Maritz's keynote speech could have been an opportunity for VMware to show the world it would continue its innovation climb and not let the purchase by EMC diminish its hunger.

Instead Maritz's opening speech was flat and the announcements he made did little to surprise anyone. He did not mention his past or register any excitement with his new position.

Customers I spoke to expected the cloud announcements that were made. Some had read the gist of the strategy in the press already and others expected the move because of Maritz's background as chief executive of EMC's Cloud Division and founder of the company's acquired firm Pi.

The keynote told the audience VMware will expand its server virtualisation technology to build the first virtual datacentre architecture – which the firm calls a Virtual Data Operating System - that will allow businesses to pool all types of hardware resources, including servers, storage and networks, into an aggregated on-premise cloud. The capacity will then be able to be federated to off-premise clouds, said Maritz. VMware will partner with vendors such as Intel, Cisco and IBM to ensure the platform succeeds.

But it seems the idea has still to be developed a great deal before VMware can expect a large uptake from customers.

The topic concerning many customers is how secure is it for them to host their infrastructure off-site? And will such a move comply with regulation, especially European Union data privacy laws that require information to be stored within the EU. Indeed, that is why EMC's consumer cloud division, Mozy, has just opened its first datacentre outside the US, in Dublin.

Maritz is aware the new idea needs a lot more work before it will start appealing to customers. Following a question and answer session with the press, Maritz told me it was a complicated issue and he did not have to time to expand on the details, but he said: "The strategy will not take off before VMware solves these data issues and puts in place the necessary solutions".

Considering the cloud announcement was the main focus of Maritz's keynote, I don't think I was alone in expecting some more granular details on how the initiative would actually take off.