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  • Digital Transformation Is More Important Than Ever, Says VMware CEO

    Digital Transformation Is More Important Than Ever, Says VMware CEO

    “In this environment, digital transformation is more important than ever,” says VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. “If you think of it only a few percentages of employees worked from home before this (pandemic). Now it’s 97 percent. Given the length and challenges that people faced this doesn’t go away.”

    Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, discusses how the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and dramatically increased the work from home trend for enterprise companies:

    Digital Transformation Is More Important Than Ever

    In this environment, digital transformation is more important than ever. If you think of it only a few percentages of employees worked from home before this (pandemic). Now it’s 97 percent. Given the length and challenges that people faced this doesn’t go away. We are going to be here for the next two years where the majority of workforces, a substantial portion, are going to be work from home distributed workforce.

    In the face of that IT and technology are more important not less. Sometimes it takes a decade to make a week of progress and sometimes a week gives you a decade of progress. All of a sudden, education, healthcare, and work from home are making huge steps forward. That’s what gives us the view that long-term tech is going to be stronger and software and cloud will be stronger yet than the overall economic environment.

    Work From Home Is The New Normal

    For VMWare, we were 20 percent work from home. I expect as we continue in this environment we will end up in at 50 to 60 percent over time. I don’t think we are atypical. We’re doubling and tripling the amount of work from home. When you think about that distributed workforce, essentially you go from 100 or 200 sites depending on the size of your company to 10,000 or 20,000 sites.

    When you think about every home becoming a new worksite they need to be managed, connected, and productive. They need to be secure. They need good quality and bandwidth. Then they need capacity. That’s where VMWare cloud comes in. That’s our business continuity focus for the future.

    We don’t see ourselves as atypical here. This is the new normal. We’re excited to see these transformations happening across the industry and we’re making good progress with customers around the globe.

    Every CIO Is Adjusting Their Priorities

    We used to generate new projects with POC’s and being face to face with customers. The salesmen always liked to shoulder up with the potential customer. We have to make adjustments. Every CIO is also adjusting their priorities due to this radical shift of a distributed workforce and the new demands that are being placed on them.

    Digital Transformation Is More Important Than Ever, Says VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger
  • VMware COO: Companies ‘Relying on Us For That Future World of 5G’

    VMware COO: Companies ‘Relying on Us For That Future World of 5G’

    VMware is synonymous with virtualization software. Everyone from data centers to end users rely on the company’s software to be able to run multiple operating systems on a single set of hardware.

    In an interview with Mad Money’s Jim Cramer, VMware COO Sanjay Poonen commented on the current state of telecommuting during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as VMware’s role in 5G.

    On The Impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic

    “This is unprecedented times. We’ve always been a trusted advisor and, as you know, we know a thing or two about virtualization. Our customers run their critical apps on our infrastructure.”

    On How Long-Lasting the Impacts Will Be

    “I think there’s part of our life, Jim, that’s going to change forever. Behind me I have a saying from Winston Churchill that says, ‘when you’re going through hell, go through it.’ Another one I like from Winston Churchill is ‘never waste a crisis.’

    And I think that’s part of our life that’s forever going to change. We will, perhaps, have a place where, for instance, less travel is good for the planet.”

    On Collaboration

    “We want to make sure that if you are at home, you are productive, you’re able to work continuous, just like it was at work…We were one of the early customers that used Zoom. We love it. We use Slack. We use Microsoft Teams. These are all ways in which you can collaborate.”

    On VMware’s Role in 5G and the Network Strain the Pandemic Is Causing

    “We have tremendous relationships with the telco players—they are some of our biggest customers—and the cloud infrastructure players. In many cases, we are between software, compute, storage and networking. Software defined architecture is really where the world of 5G is going.

    “So a lot of these big companies have started relying on us for that future world of 5G. And software is a lot easier to manage. It’s also just as reliable, more reliable, because you can fix things. And we’re working very closely with our customers. Bandwidth is going to be something we watch very carefully.”

     

    https://player.cnbc.com/p/gZWlPC/cnbc_global?playertype=synd&byGuid=7000127560

     

  • Microsoft Expected To Make Major Cloud Gains At The Expense Of—Everyone

    Microsoft Expected To Make Major Cloud Gains At The Expense Of—Everyone

    On the heals of a survey showing Microsoft making significant inroads in the cloud industry, Morgan Stanley has even worse news for the company’s competitors, according to Business Insider.

    In the previous survey by Goldman Sachs—despite AWS taking in the lion’s share of cloud revenue—97% of companies said they currently use Azure, compared with 58% for AWS and 25% for Google Cloud. Even more concerning, the survey showed that far more companies were planning to use Microsoft’s platform within the next three years compared to its competitors.

    Morgan Stanley’s research provides more validation for Microsoft’s current strategy, predicting the company will “gain the largest percentage of IT budgets over the next three years, while VMware, Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, and Dell stand to lose the most.”

    Further complicating things is an expected slowdown in IT budgets in 2020. The slowdown will negatively impact the above companies as more and more businesses move to the cloud. This move signals more good news for Microsoft, however, as it is expected to see gains “driven by an increasing proportion of customers citing Microsoft as their preferred hybrid cloud vendor,” according to the survey.

    After years of telling customers onsite hardware was antiquated and unnecessary, even Amazon recently joined the hybrid market. As Business Insider points out, with Microsoft’s lead in this particular segment, Amazon may regret ignoring the hybrid cloud market for so long.

  • It Is a Multi-Cloud World, Says VMWare COO

    It Is a Multi-Cloud World, Says VMWare COO

    “VMWare allows the datacenter to act like a public cloud,” says VMWare COO Sanjay Poonen. “It is a multicloud world. While AWS will be first and preferred for us, we want every customer that has VMWare in the private cloud but AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Alibaba, those are the top five hyperscalers, and all of them have embraced VMWare.”

    Sanjay Poonen, COO of VMWare, discusses the incredible growth of VMWare which is driven by their ability to connect companies to any and every cloud in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:

    Software Is Defining Everything

    We had a great quarter. You have to put the bigger picture in perspective. We’re in the golden age of software where software is defining everything. Software companies, in general, are doing well. What we have done as a company is focus on making the datacenter software-driven and we think there is a bright future there. We showed some examples of that in hyperconverged  (HCI) and in software-defined networking (SDN). 

    We also showed some incredible momentum with our partnerships in the hybrid-cloud. Amazon is obviously first and preferred there. We announced a partnership with Azure. There is also the digital workspace which is all of the devices. We think our future is bright and we just have to keep executing. Our view is always the long-run. 

    In This Software Future We Are Not Tethered To One Company

    I think there is a little bit of a misperception that we should nip in the bud (regarding correlating Dell’s earnings with VMWare). First off, VMWare’s business with Dell in these areas like hyperconverged, we’ve now surpassed companies like Nutanix who are number one in hyper-converged infrastructure, and in the digital workspace where we are partnering with Dell Laptops, those are going very well. We want Dell and VMWare to do well together. In the datacenter we work with Dell, HPE, Cisco, Lenovo, etc. There is no one hardware player that is the majority of our business. 

    In cloud we work with AWS, Azure, Google, Alibaba, and IBM. You won’t find another company that has got as many hybrid-cloud partners. In the digital workspace, we work with Apple, Google, and Microsoft. In this software future, we are not tethered to one company. We are optimized to Dell, we are not tethered to them. You need a software-based solution for any of these areas, the datacenter, the cloud, or the digital workspace during tough times and in good times. 

    It Is a Multi-Cloud World

    You should think about applications like mobile homes. They’re going to move from the datacenter to the cloud on this freeway called VMWare. The mobile home could go to one cloud and may come back. VMWare allows the datacenter to act like a public cloud. We make the hardware datacenter look like Amazon. Now if you are an Amazon customer, and they have 30-35 percent market share, number one in the market for cloud, they are our preferred cloud partner, we can help customers. We have many customers who are adopting VMWare cloud in AWS. 

    For those customers who said we are not an Amazon shop, for example, we quoted Walmart in our earnings announcement, they are using Azure. They have an option now because we announced a partnership with Azure. There are some customers that are going to have some other clouds. It is a multicloud world. While AWS will be first and preferred for us, we want every customer that has VMWare in the private cloud but AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Alibaba, those are the top five hyperscalers, and all of them have embraced VMWare. 

    IBM is a great partner of VMWare. We love their services business. IBM Cloud has 2,000+ customers. We are going to partner really well with Ginni Rometty and the team. We compete with a small part of Red Hat’s business in containers. Over 80 percent of Red Hat’s business is Linux, a good part of their business which is OpenShift and JBoss, is not doing so well. The future of containers is a small part of the business. We can walk and chew gum. We can partner with IBM and compete with that small part of Red Hat and that’s our focus. We want a big tent at VMWare. We want to partner with as many people as possible and compete with as few people as possible. 

    Make Your Story Sesame Street Simple

    First off, if you want to serve your customers well start by serving your employees. One of my professors at the Harvard Business School, Len Schlesinger, wrote an article and book on service profit chain. What he talked about is if you want to create shareholder value focus not just on customer satisfaction but satisfied employees. Hug your start. Take care of the best and brightest who come in there. 

    The second one is something that all of us can do which is make your story Sesame Street simple. All too often, I see product managers and account executives blabbering on with PowerPoints. Let’s tell the story just like you are telling the story to your mother or to your kids. Ironically, when you make things simple you’re going back to the basic principals of Steven Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends and Influence People. It’s not that complicated. Have customer empathy.

    It Is a Multi-Cloud World, Says VMWare COO Sanjay Poonen
  • Clumio Raises $135 Million Series C Funding For Cloud Backup Solutions

    Clumio Raises $135 Million Series C Funding For Cloud Backup Solutions

    Cloud backup provider Clumio has announced that it has secured $135 million in Series C funding.

    Clumio was founded by serial entrepreneur Poojan Kumar to provide cloud companies with a suite of cloud-based backup tools. The company’s approach is someone unique in that, “unlike legacy backup vendors, Clumio SaaS is born in the cloud,” says Kumar. “This round of investment allows us to push that advantage as we accelerate our development and go to market strategy while continuing to meet customer requirements for backup, regardless of where the data is.”

    As an added benefit of the service, customers do not need to install—or even purchase—any specialized hardware or software to take advantage of Clumio SaaS. The service allows a company the ability to rewind and go back to a point before something went wrong, such as a cyberattack or data loss event.

    “Similar to Snowflake disrupting the data warehousing market by leveraging the scale, elasticity and economics of the public cloud, Clumio is building a globally consolidated data protection service the right way,” said Mike Speiser, Managing Director, Sutter Hill Ventures. “Harnessing the full power of the public cloud, they are reimagining the backup experience for the enterprise paying particular attention to security, predictable costs and simplicity for their customers.”

    The company plans to put the funding to good use, growing its engineering team and expanding its U.S. operations.

    “This new funding will help Clumio execute in the following areas:

    • Accelerate the growth of its engineering team, both at the company’s headquarters in Santa Clara, CA and in its new development center in Bangalore, India
    • Expand go to market and service operations in the U.S.
    • Add more support for its 100% channel strategy with additional partner resources and programs and build upon momentum in technology partner programs with AWS, VMware and others
    • Introduce support for new workloads as Clumio continues to execute against its vision for a globally consolidated data protection service

    “Clumio is a secure, backup as a service that consolidates the protection of an enterprise data center and any remote sites with no hardware or software to size, configure, manage – or even buy at all. As enterprises move aggressively to cloud, they can use Clumio to protect workloads like VMware Cloud on AWS and native AWS services. Authentic SaaS protects data regardless of where it resides and delivers critical benefits to the enterprise.”

  • Google Acquires CloudSimple, A Company Once Crucial to Microsoft

    Google Acquires CloudSimple, A Company Once Crucial to Microsoft

    Google announced in a blog post today that it has acquired CloudSimple, a company once central to Microsoft’s cloud ambitions.

    CloudSimple is a “secure, high performance, dedicated environment in Public Clouds to run VMware workloads.” Google struck a partnership with CloudSimple in August, following a convoluted series of events.

    Microsoft, in an effort to catch up with AWS, needed to bring on as many VMware customers as possible to its cloud solutions. CloudSimple was created by Guru Pangal, an entrepreneur who spent four years working for Microsoft on Azure. Microsoft and VMware had been rivals for some time. As a result, Microsoft’s plan was to use the newly created CloudSimple—also a VMware partner—as a conduit to migrate VMware workloads to Azure.

    Michael Dell, CEO of the company bearing his name, stepped in to help smooth things out between the two companies, helping Microsoft secure formal permission to run VMware on Azure. As part of the deal, however, Dell-owned Virtustream became the recommended method of migrating VMware to Azure, leaving CloudSimple out in the cold.

    Google saw an opportunity and formed a partnership with CloudSimple in August with the aim of helping companies migrate onsite VMware workloads to Google Cloud VMware Solution by CloudSimple.

    “Through our existing partnership with CloudSimple, our customers can migrate their VMware workloads from on-premises datacenters directly into Google Cloud VMware Solution by CloudSimple, while also creating new VMware workloads as needed. Their apps can run exactly the same as they have been on-premises, but with all the benefits of the cloud, like performance, elasticity, and integration with key cloud services and technologies. And best of all, customers can do all this without having to re-architect existing VMware-based applications and workloads, which helps them operate more efficiently and reduce costs, while also allowing IT staff to maintain consistency and use their existing VMware tools, workflows and support. To that end, we believe in a multi-cloud world and will continue to provide choice for our customers to use the best technology in their journey to the cloud.”

    Now that Google has acquired CloudSimple, it will be interesting to see if it can makeup lost ground against rivals Microsoft and Amazon.

  • Google Hires Former VP of Microsoft’s Office Product Group

    Google Hires Former VP of Microsoft’s Office Product Group

    Business Insider is reporting that Google has hired Javier Soltero, a former head of strategy for Microsoft Office. Soltero had left Microsoft in late 2018 amid internal reorganization.

    In his new role with Google, Soltero will take over as Vice President of G Suite. Google’s suite of programs includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drive and more. The company has made inroads in the productivity market dominated by Microsoft. While G Suite is available for free, a more robust version is offered to business customers for a monthly subscription. As of Q4 2018, Google reported having some five million paying G Suite customers.

    Soltero brings much to the table for Google. After several years at VMware, he joined Microsoft when the company bought his startup Acompli, turning it into Outlook Mobile. He spent his first year at Microsoft as Corporate Vice President of Outlook, followed by two years as Corporate Vice President of the Office Product Group. His final role was as Corporate Vice President of Cortana.

    Google has been hiring a string of executives as it tries to compete with Microsoft and Amazon in the cloud industry. At Google, Soltero will report directly to Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian.

  • VMware COO: We Have a Bigger Plan For Security

    VMware COO: We Have a Bigger Plan For Security

    “Fundamentally, we have a bigger plan for security,” says VMware COO Sanjay Poonen. “We felt it was the perfect time for us to come up with a disruptive play that was based on big data, was AI, and was cloud-based. There were only two companies doing it, CrowdStrike and Carbon Black. We felt Carbon Black was better integrated to us, had as good a product or better. We have a plan to integrate Carbon Black and make it intrinsic in a way that nobody else will do. We think this will transform the security industry that’s been broken today.”

    Sanjay Poonen, COO of VMware, elaborates on how they plan to transform security and lead the containers movement currently going on in digital transformation. Poonen was interviewed by Jim Cramer on CNBC:

    Containers Are A Movement Going On In Digital Transformation 

    When you look at these types of transformational moments going on in digital transformation, these happen once every 10 to 20 years. VMware is the company that invented the virtual machine and for the last 20 years, we’ve created a million jobs in that part of infrastructure. There is a movement going on in digital transformation right now called containers. We believe it’s our birthright to own that movement. There will be potentially tens of millions of jobs among developers created on top of this virtual machine. 

    Think of the virtual machine sort of like the ship and containers like the things on top of it. In the 1950s containers completely transformed ships and VMware created the ship. These containers are going to allow apps to be fundamentally transformed. We found as we thought about this that this was the right time to do it and it was our birthright to do it better than anybody else. Why not take those three thousand people in Pivotal and $750 million in revenue and turbocharge the next ten years of VMware, not just in virtual machines and virtualization in the path to the cloud, which is the first C, but the other C is containers. We think that’s a big part.

    We’re A Go-To-Market Machine

    Pivotal (is more valuable than the market initially believed) for two reasons. They’ve refactored their product which now sits completely on Kubernetes. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a sort of the big open-source container movement. And their go-to-market engine probably stuttered a little bit. But that’s what VMware does well. We’re a go-to-market machine. We’ll bring them in and accelerate this to our 500,000 customers. We feel good when we get a good product in the hands of our good go-to-market machine. I think we can accelerate it. 

    At VMware, no one person does it, it takes a village but also our partners like Dell and the ecosystem also. VMware has 75,000 partners who love us. We’re going to take this to those ecosystem partners. We have a big tent of system integrators and they’re excited about this. We branded the entire thing, that’s the other thing we’ve done pretty well. Tenzo, which is the Japanese word for containers, we’re doing big ads in New York, San Francisco, and London Airports. This is a play on the word VMware that says ContainerWare. We’re not changing the name of the company but we’re going big in containers and that’s the key message.

    We Have a Bigger Plan For Security

    Fundamentally, we have a bigger plan for security.  Let me just walk you through a quick understanding of the strategy. There are a lot of parallels with security and healthcare. My mom’s a doctor. Imagine you went to a doctor and you asked her how do you get well and she said you have to eat 5,000 tablets. Eating one every 30 seconds would take you a couple of weeks to do. That’s what the security industry is today. It’s 5,000 vendors, broken, with lots of different agents bloated on people’s laptops, lots of alerts showing up, and manual labor.

    We look at this and say there’s a fundamentally new way to do it, which is to make security intrinsic to your diet. You eat your vegetables, your fruit, you drink your water, brush your teeth, and that’s what we’re doing with security. We are making it part of our platform. 

    A Disruptive Play Based On Big Data, AI, and Cloud-Based

    We’ve been doing very well in network security around the NSX product but endpoint security and workload security we didn’t have much there. We had Workspace ONE, our AirWatch related product, and we found that many of these endpoint security players were kind of in a little internal turmoil. Symantec got bought by Broadcom. McAfee got bought by Intel and then was spun out again. We felt it was the perfect time for us to come up with a disruptive play that was based on big data, was AI, and was cloud-based.

    There were only two companies doing it, CrowdStrike and Carbon Black. We felt Carbon Black was better integrated to us, had as good a product or better, and we intend to acquire them. The acquisition hasn’t yet closed. We have a plan to integrate this and make it intrinsic in a way that nobody else will do. We laid that out at VMworld. We think this will transform the security industry that’s been broken today.

    VMware COO Sanjay Poonen: We Have a Bigger Plan For Security
  • Bitcoin is Bad, Blockchain Is Revolutionizing, Says VMware CEO

    Bitcoin is Bad, Blockchain Is Revolutionizing, Says VMware CEO

    “Bitcoin as its implemented and implementation of blockchain and distributed ledger I assert is bad,” says VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. “Its purpose is almost all illicit and it’s an environmental crisis. This is a terrible implementation of blockchain. I’m not saying that blockchain is bad. I think it is revolutionizing. This is breakthrough innovative technology and how you do distributed secured trust. That’s powerful. We are huge believers strongly committed to blockchain and distributed leverage technology.”

    Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, says that Bitcoin is bad, but blockchain, when done right, is revolutionizing in an interview with theCUBE at VMworld 2019 in San Francisco. 

    Bitcoin is Bad, Blockchain Is Revolutionizing

    The idea of distributed ledger technology, immutable distributed trust, I’ve said I think of that, and blockchain is the underlying technology, as almost like public-private key encryption. If we go back 40 years before RSA it’s that important. This is breakthrough innovative technology and how you do distributed secured trust. That’s powerful. We are huge believers strongly committed to blockchain and distributed leverage technology. Why do I make my comments like I do on Bitcoin? Bitcoin as its implemented and implementation of blockchain and distributed ledger I assert is bad. It’s bad for two reasons. 

    One is it’s an environmental crisis. A single ledger if you and I transacted a penny I would consume enough energy to power your house for half a day. It’s incredible. This is a terrible implementation of blockchain. Secondly, the way it’s also done as well in this totally unregulated environment, almost all of its uses are for illicit and criminal purposes. That’s who’s trading in Bitcoin. So its purpose is almost all illicit and it’s an environmental crisis. I say bad. I’m not saying that blockchain is bad. I think it is revolutionizing. Studies have shown that over 95 percent of the uses of Bitcoin is criminal. Let’s go make it good. Do good engineering and engineer for good.

    Partnership With Australian Stock Exchange and Digital Asset

    We just announced on Sunday a partnership with the Australian Stock Exchange and Digital Asset. They’re leveraging the VMWare distributed ledger technology as part of their go-forward strategy for the stock exchange in Australia. That’s good. We’re making it suitable for enterprises meeting the regulatory requirements and we’re order plus magnitude better in terms of performance and energy consumption and we’re just getting started.

    Bitcoin is Bad, Blockchain Is Revolutionizing, Says VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger
  • VMware Is Now a Platform For Digital Transformation, Says CEO

    VMware Is Now a Platform For Digital Transformation, Says CEO

    “We believe that our conversations now have gone from targeted to holistic to be this platform for their digital transformation,” says VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. “That core idea of how do they get to that digital future, that’s not an IT discussion anymore, that’s a business strategy conversation. That’s why we are seeing this real uplift in the position in the conversation that we are having with customers globally.”

    Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, discusses how VMware has become a complete digital transformation platform for companies in an interview on CNBC:

    VMware Is Now a Platform For Digital Transformation

    We believe that our conversations now as we’ve expanded from selling compute Hypervisor to a complete cloud infrastructure, complete end-user computing, a transformation of their network and security offerings, our conversations have gone from targeted to holistic to be this platform for their digital transformation. That core idea of how do they get to that digital future, that’s not an IT discussion anymore, that’s a business strategy conversation.

    That’s why we are seeing this real uplift in the position in the conversation that we are having with customers globally. As we’ve positioned in the past, as people move to the full VMware offering that is a multiplier. A company or an institution that is using us as a Hypervisor, now the full cloud stack of network, compute, management, and automation, that is a business expansion opportunity for us.

    VMware Seeking Ability To Be a Government Cloud Provider

    As I said on the (earnings) call we are now in the FedRAMP High process. We are seeking that ability to be a cloud provider for the government and many of the government. Many of the government in defense and intelligence are big VMware footprints. We see this as a great opportunity. We are in process to get approval. As the JEDI contract gets resolved we hope to be able to be positioned with Amazon and Azure, given our relationships with both.

    Even as our preferred relationship with Amazon is very strong we do see this ability for us to participate for government business being an essential element of our multi-cloud strategy where Amazon, Azure, IBM, and our other cloud partners all give us a great opportunity to participate for government contracts.

    VMware Is Now a Platform For Digital Transformation, Says CEO Pat Gelsinger
  • Michael Dell Predicts in 10 Years More Computed Data on the Edge Than Cloud

    Michael Dell Predicts in 10 Years More Computed Data on the Edge Than Cloud

    “The surprise outcome ten years from now is there’ll be something much bigger than the private cloud and the public cloud,” says Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell. “It’s the edge. I actually think there will be way more computed data on the edge in ten years than any of the derivatives of cloud that we want to talk about. That’s the ten-year prediction.”

    Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, discusses how it has become a critical technology platform for its customers in an interview with theCUBE at Dell Technology World 2019 in Las Vegas:

    Data Has Always Been at the Center of How the Technology Industry Works

    We feel great. Our business has really grown tremendously. All the things we’ve been doing have been resonating with customers. We’ve been able to restore the origins of the entrepreneurial dream and success of the company and reintroduce innovation and risk-taking into a now $91 billion company growing at double digits last year. Certainly, the set of capabilities that we’ve been able to build organically and inorganically, with the set of alliances we have, the trust that customers have given us, we are super happy about the position that we’re in and the opportunities going forward. I think all this is really just a pregame show to what’s ahead for our industry and for the role that technology is going to play in the world.

    Data has always been at the center of how the technology industry works. Now we just have a tsunami, an explosion of data. Of course, now we have this new computer science that allows us to reason over the data in real time and create much better results and outcomes. That combined with the computing power all organizations have to reimagine themselves given all these technologies. Certainly, the infrastructure requirements in terms of the network, the storage, that compute, the build-out on the edge, tons of new requirements, we’re super well-positioned to go address all that.

    Predicts in 10 Years More Computed Data on the Edge Than Cloud

    The surprise outcome ten years from now is there’ll be something much bigger than the private cloud and the public cloud. It’s the edge. I actually think there will be way more computed data on the edge in ten years than any of the derivatives of cloud that we want to talk about. That’s the ten-year prediction. That’s what I see. Maybe nobody’s predicting that just yet, but let’s come back in ten years and see what it looks like.

    Really what we’re doing is we’re bringing to customers all the resources they need to operate in the hybrid multi-cloud world. First, you have to recognize that the workloads want to move around. To say that they’re all going to be here or there is in some sense missing the point because they’re going to move back and forth. You’ve got regulation, cost, security, performance, latency, all sorts of new requirements that are coming at you and they’re not going to just sit in one place.

    This is All Super Important As We Enter This AI Enabled Age

    Now with the VMware cloud foundation, we have the ability to move these workloads seamlessly across now essentially all the public clouds. We have 4,200 partners out there, infrastructure on-premise built and tuned specifically for the VMware platform and empowered also for the edge. All of this together is the Dell Technologies cloud. We have obviously great capabilities from our Dell UMC infrastructure solutions and all the great innovations at VMware coming together.

    Inside the business, the first priority was to get each of the individual pieces working well. But then we saw that the real opportunity was in the seams and how we could more deeply integrate all the aspects of what we’re doing together. You saw that on stage you know in vivid form yesterday with Pat and Jeff and Satya and even more today. Of course, there’s more to do. There’s always more to do. We’re working on how we build a data platform bringing together all of our capabilities with Boomi and Data Protection and VMware. This is all going to be super important as we enter this AI enabled age of the future.

    We’ve Created an Incredible Business

    I think investors are increasingly understanding that we’ve created an incredible business here. Certainly, if we look at the additional coverage that we have as they’re understanding the business, some of the analysts are starting to say hey this doesn’t really feel like a conglomerate. It’s a direct quote. If you think about what we demonstrated today and yesterday and will demonstrate in the future we’re not like Berkshire Hathaway. This is not a railroad that owns a chain of restaurants. This is one integrated business that fits together incredibly well and it’s generating substantial cash flows.

    I think investors over time are figuring out the value that’s intrinsic to the overall Dell Technologies family. We’ve got lots of ways to invest, we got VMware, SecureWorks, Pivotal, and of course the overall Dell Technologies.

    Michael Dell Predicts in 10 Years More Computed Data on the Edge Than Cloud


  • There’s This Explosion of Innovation, Says VMware CEO

    There’s This Explosion of Innovation, Says VMware CEO

    “There’s this explosion of innovation that’s going on,” says VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. “I’ve called it the four superpowers; cloud, mobility, AI, and IoT. These are just causing so many new companies, investment of capital, major new IPOs that are going on. I think with each sort of wave of these innovative cycles there’s an explosion of new companies, but then there’s also a consolidation of existing companies.”

    Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, and Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, discuss the explosion of innovation that is going on in tech in an interview on CNBC:

    There’s This Explosion of Innovation, Says VMware CEO

    There’s this explosion of innovation that’s going on. I’ve called it the four superpowers; cloud, mobility, AI, and IOT. These are just causing so many new companies, investment of capital, major new IPOs that are going on. I think with each sort of wave of these innovative cycles there’s an explosion of new companies, but then there’s also a consolidation of existing companies. All of the layers start to reform. Up here you’ve got a whole new set of them emerging in many of these areas and in the existing areas there is some level of consolidation. I do believe there will be some because fundamentally at the infrastructure layer I believe customers want fewer more strategic vendors.

    As I talk to CIOs I say my job is every one of your engineers is looking down the stack at infrastructure I want to enable you to have them look up to the application and business differentiating services. We’re increasingly going to automate, standardized, and cloud deliver those infrastructure layers so you don’t have to do it. We’re doing it for you in an automated AI standardized way so every one of your resources gets to look up to create business differentiating services. So yes I believe both of those will be true consolidation and explosion of innovation.

    Customers Don’t Want to be Systems Integrators, Says Michael Dell

    Well, certainly the combination of Dell, EMC, VMware, and Pivotal was the biggest ones (consolidations) yet to date. That was a pretty big one and last year we added more than $11 billion in revenue so that was some additional industry consolidation there for you. I think customers to Pat’s point have told us very clearly they don’t want to be systems integrators anymore. They’re looking for fewer partners. Bringing together a broad set of capabilities across the infrastructure, security, client devices, the cloud, digital transformation, enabling all those capabilities for customers. They’d much rather work with one leading company than 20 or 30 smaller ones.

    There’s This Explosion of Innovation, Says VMware CEO


  • VMware CEO: Why Can’t We Build the Telco Network Like the Clouds?

    VMware CEO: Why Can’t We Build the Telco Network Like the Clouds?

    VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger suggests that with the advent of 5G the telco network should be built like the clouds. “Why can’t we build the telco network like the clouds have been built for with scalability, flexibility, efficiency, and agility?” says Gelsinger. “That’s really the idea of the telco cloud. As people go to what’s called NFV, network function virtualization, and as they’re looking ahead to 5G services, can’t we have a new architecture for building the telco cloud? But it also is flexible and scalable and helps them do services between 4G and 5G.”

    Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, discusses 5G and building the telco network like the clouds in an interview at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with CNBC:

    Building the Telco Network Like the Clouds

    What it really is about it’s saying that over the last decade and a half we’ve gotten pretty good at building clouds. Why can’t we build the telco network like the clouds have been built for with scalability, flexibility, efficiency, and agility? That’s really the idea of the telco cloud. As people go to what’s called NFV, network function virtualization, and as they’re looking ahead to 5G services, can’t we have a new architecture for building the telco cloud? But it also is flexible and scalable and helps them do services between 4G and 5G. It also helps them bridge so as they build these new services they can run them on the old as well as prepare services for the new.

    The telco market is like 80 percent the size of the data center and cloud market. This is big. It’s a huge adjacent market that largely we’ve never touched before. We’re really excited about that. If you think about what we’ve done, it’s about building this rock-hard infrastructure that never goes down. Data centers, businesses, and banks running it told the telco networks that they need rock-hard never-goes-down infrastructure. We really find a huge opportunity there.

    2020 is the Year for 5G

    I’ve said for a few years that I think 2020 is the year (for 5G implementation). I think when you when you see a show like this everybody’s starting to really gear up. The trials are underway. I really see 2020 as really where it’s going to happen. Right now the national anthem is playing and next year the game gets started. If you’re going to be a cloud you’ve got to be efficient. That helps the bottom line by building more cost efficiency and operational efficiency. You have to do that. But ultimately, it’s about the new services that 5G is going to introduce.

    It’s hard to say how much Huawei (potentially being banned in Europe) is going to impact. Obviously, people who have large positions with Huawei today, it becomes easy to add 5G onto it. It is somewhat dependent on carrier and market. Our view of what we’re trying to do with virtualization is to minimize unique dependencies on any particular hardware market. Part of our value proposition exactly helps customers navigate through the 4G to 5G transition as well as picking different key hardware vendors. That’s what that virtualization layer does so we think we actually help customers.


  • Software Revenue Rose 4.8% Last Year

    Software Revenue Rose 4.8% Last Year

    The PC market is in a funk, with PC manufacturers scrambling to find a way to make desktop and notebook PCs relevant within the new reality of mobile tablets and smartphones. That doesn’t mean, however, that the software companies providing the applications for the PC market are headed the same way. As businesses and consumers push forward with their already-capable PCs, software sales are still growing.

    Market research firm Gartner today released a new report showing that global software revenue hit $407.3 billion during 2013. This is up 4.8% from the $388.5 billion the industry earned during 2012.

    Though it is clear that the software industry is enduring the hardware shift of the past few years, software itself is also undergoing a major transition. According to Gartner this shift involves companies that are both supporting existing traditional software infrastructures while rolling out new cloud-based solutions and pioneering other subscription-based services. Even many of those PC hardware companies that are struggling to hold back the rising tide of mobile devices are re-configuring their business models to rely more on enterprise software and security services.

    “The software market has been changing shape over the past five years, and cloud is driving the bulk of this change as software vendors acquire and provide applications and infrastructure technology to support the cloud and the internet of things (IoT) movement,” said Joanne Correia, research VP at Gartner. “A clear indicator of this is that for the first time we have a pure cloud vendor in the top 10.”

    The cloud vendor Correia referenced is Salesforce.com, a customer relationship management (CRM) company that provides businesses with cloud-based CRM solutions. Salesforce ranks tenth on Gartner’s list of the top ten software vendors of 2013 ranked by revenue. The company saw its revenues increase by over 33% year-over-year in 2013, up to $3.8 billion.

    The list is led by the perennial heavyweight of the software business, Microsoft, which grew software revenue 6% to hit $65.7 billion in 2013. They are led by Oracle ($29.6 billion), IBM ($29.1%), SAP ($18.5 billion), and Symantec ($6.4 billion). Another heavily cloud-based business, VMware, rose to eighth place on Gartner’s list by increasing revenue 14.1% to $4.8 billion in 2013.

  • Google And VMWare Team Up To Bring Windows Apps To Chromebooks

    Google And VMWare Team Up To Bring Windows Apps To Chromebooks

    Google has seen the popularity of Chromebooks increase, but one of the biggest knocks against them is always the lack of desktop app support. That changes now to some extent.

    Google announced today that it has partnered with VMWare to bring traditional Windows apps and desktops to Chromebooks.

    “Cloud applications allow flexibility, scalability and security and enable a work-anywhere environment, but many of our customers still use traditional desktop applications,” says Chrome Director of Product Management Rajen Sheth. “Desktop as a Service (DaaS) helps bridge the gap between the cloud and a traditional desktop by allowing you to run your traditional software in the cloud and have applications appear on your Chromebook similarly to how they run today. An example might be your Windows based accounting application.”

    “Today, customers can fully embrace the cloud with Chromebooks using VMware Horizon DaaS. VMware and Google are working together to make the migration of legacy applications even easier, by using the HTML5/Blast experience from Chromebooks. This means you can work with Chromebooks and connect to a Windows experience running VMWare Horizon View.”

    He goes on to say that Chromebooks and DaaS environments will help things like security vulnerabilities, app compatibility and migration budgets be things of the past.

    I wonder if any of this will change the Pawn Star guy’s opinion of Chromebooks.

    More on the partnership here.

    Image via YouTube

  • VMware Pays Large Sum To Acquire Nicira

    VMware Pays Large Sum To Acquire Nicira

    VMware has agreed to acquire software-defined networking (SDN)/network virtualization provider Nicira for $1.05 billion in cash plus about $210 million of assumed unvested equity awards.

    “VMware has led the server virtualization revolution, and we have the opportunity to do the same in datacenter and cloud networking,” said VMware CEO Paul Maritz. “The acquisition of Nicira adds to our portfolio of networking assets and positions VMware to be the industry leader in software-defined networking.”

    Nicira CEO Steve Mullaney says, “Nicira helps customers dramatically improve business velocity and efficiency by transforming how networking works in the Cloud era. I’m thrilled to be joining forces with VMware to help build the software-defined datacenter.”

    VMware CTO Steve Herrod talks about the acquisition on the company’s blog:

    Cloud computing is about agile, elastic, efficient, and reliable services, and it can only be achieved through intelligent software that abstracts out hardware resources, pools it into aggregate capacity, enabling automation to safely and efficiently dole it out as needed by applications.

    Tenants or customers utilizing the software-defined datacenter can have their own virtual datacenter with an isolated collection of all the compute, storage, networking, and security resources that they are used to. Furthermore, this virtual datacenter can grow and shrink to efficiently utilize physical resources. But most importantly, the time to deploy these resources can be orders of magnitude faster than in most of today’s IT environments. This is what the software-defined datacenter is all about, and it is the architecture for the cloud. This acquisition advances our software-defined datacenter strategy.

    The acquisition is expected to close during the second half of the year, and is pending regulatory approvals. It’s already been approved by both boards.

  • VMware to Acquire DynamicOps, Inc.

    VMware to Acquire DynamicOps, Inc.

    VMware out of PaloAlto, California just announced a definitive agreement to acquire DynamicOps, Inc., a provider of cloud automation solutions and management of IT services across diverse environments.

    While the terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, the acquisition is expected to be complete by the end of the third quarter in 2012.

    Here’s what VMware had to say about the acquisition in the news release on their website:

    VMware believes that customers will benefit most by a standardized architecture, but will build solutions that make it easy for customers to choose the model that best works for their needs, including heterogeneous environments/management. Customers that have standardized their private and public clouds on VMware vSphere can continue to rely on VMware vCloud Director to enable aggregation and management of virtual and cloud resources.

    For customers whose requirements for managing and provisioning resources extend beyond VMware-only environments, DynamicOps builds on the capabilities of vCloud Director by enabling customers to consume multi-cloud resources (e.g., physical environments, Hyper-V- and Xen-based hypervisors, and Amazon EC2). DynamicOps’ policy-based service governor capabilities automate and control how applications and users are provisioned across physical and heterogeneous cloud infrastructure resources.

    Ramin Sayar, vice president and general manager of Virtualization and Cloud Management at VMware comments on the acquisition of DynamicOps:

    “As IT organizations evolve from builders to brokers of services many seek to provide access to diverse cloud resources in a controlled, managed fashion,”

    “DynamicOps’ multi-cloud and multi-platform capabilities help to strengthen VMware’s position as the infrastructure and management vendor of choice for cloud computing.”

    Rich Krueger, CEO of DynamicOps comments on joining the VMware team:

    “VMware and DynamicOps share a common vision for dramatically simplifying the management and provisioning of IT resources in the Cloud era,”

    “I’m excited about DynamicOps joining VMware, and expect our customers to benefit from increased investment and support in the solutions they rely on to optimize their delivery of IT-as-a-service.”

    DynamicOps is privately held company based in Burlington, Massachusetts. It is expected that VMware will integrate DynamicOps’ technologies into their current products and solutions to offer even greater benefits to existing and prospective clients.

  • Google Launches App Engine For Business

    Google Launches App Engine For Business

    Google has introduced App Engine for Business aimed at allowing companies build and maintain their own applications on the same scalable infrastructure that powers Google applications.

    New features for businesses include the ability to manage all apps in an organization from one place, simple pricing based on users and applications, premium developer support, a 99.9 percent uptime service level agreement, and coming later this year, access to premium features like cloud-based SQL and SSL.

    /Google-App-Engine-for-Busin Google has also been working with VMware on cloud portability, which makes it easier for Java developers to use tools they are familiar with to develop and deploy rich web apps in the environment of their choice. In one click, users of the new versions of SpringSource Tool Suite and Google Web Toolkit can deploy their application onto Google App Engine for Business, or a VMware environment, or other infrastructure such as Amazon EC2.

    Other key features of Google App Engine for Business include:

    Secure by default: Only users from your Google Apps domain can access applications and your security policies are enforced on every app.

    Pricing that makes sense: Each application costs just $8 per user, per month up to a maximum of $1000 a month. Pay only for what you use.

    Centralized administration: A new, company-focused administration console lets you manage all the applications in your domain.

    Google App Engine for Business is currently in preview, open to a limited number of enterprises.
     

  • VMware’s Acquisition Of Zimbra Made Official

    VMware’s Acquisition Of Zimbra Made Official

    The rumors about Yahoo selling Zimbra have finally become fact.  Today, VMware announced that it’s acquired the open source email and collaboration specialist, and although the financial details weren’t disclosed, corporate representatives on all sides of the transaction seem pleased.

    Let’s start with someone who works for the buyer.  Brian Byun, VMware’s Vice President and General Manager of Cloud Services, said in a statement, "[W]e expect more organizations, especially small and medium size businesses, to increasingly buy core IT solutions that deliver cloud-like simplicity in end-user and operational experience.  Zimbra is a great example of the type of scalable ‘cloud era’ solutions that can span smaller, on-premise implementations to the cloud."

    That might not mean Yahoo’s missing out on a lot of fantastic opportunities, however.  It’s important to keep in mind that the sale was voluntary, and not some kind of takeover, of course.

    Also, Jim Morrisroe, Vice President of Sales at Zimbra, wrote on its corporate blog, "Zimbra’s technologies have and will continue to play a role in Yahoo!’s communications services, including Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Calendar.  The Yahoo! team is very happy for us, our customers and our community as we prepare to enter this new era.  We owe Yahoo! a great deal of appreciation for their support."

    So until the companies reveal a purchase price through an SEC filing – or it leaks some other way – it looks like the matter’s about wrapped up.  The deal is supposed to close this quarter.

    Related Articles:

    > Yahoo Sale Of Zimbra To VMware Rumored

    > Yahoo Zimbra Desktop Now Synching

    > Yahoo May Dispose Of Zimbra

     

  • Yahoo Sale Of Zimbra To VMware Rumored

    Yahoo Sale Of Zimbra To VMware Rumored

    At the moment, the Zimbra homepage bears a "BUY ZIMBRA" button and a stamp reading "a Yahoo division."  But according to a new report, a sale of Zimbra (and not just a Zimbra product) may soon take place, making "a VMware division" a more accurate statement.

    Kara Swisher wrote earlier today, "Yahoo is close to selling its Zimbra unit to VMware, according to several sources close to the situation. . . .  Sources said the deal will be announced soon, but the price for the open-source email unit was still unclear."

    Yahoo bought Zimbra for $350 million towards the end of 2007, so it’ll be interesting to see whether the price has gone up or down since then.  No overly nasty rumors appear to be in circulation now, at least, considering that Yahoo’s stock rose by 1.91 percent today.  (For reference: the Dow and Nasdaq went up 1.50 percent and 1.73 percent, respectively, so this isn’t amazing.)

    Anyway, a development along these lines wasn’t unexpected.  Yahoo’s been unloading properties for a while thanks to Carol Bartz’s get-back-to-basics directive, and in October, Zimbra’s former president and CTO also left the company.

    Related Articles:

    > Yahoo Zimbra Desktop Now Synching

    > Yahoo May Dispose Of Zimbra

    > Yahoo Undergoes Another Exec Shuffle