VMware remains the most important company in the virtualization industry, and one of the most important in the entire computer field. That means that CEO Pat Gelsinger is one of the most powerful, influential leaders in the business. Virtualization & Cloud Review conducted an e-mail Q&A to get his take on Dell, cloud computing, his vision for the future and more. The exchange has been lightly edited for clarity. Q: Virtualization & Cloud Review: How has the transition from #EMC ownership to #Dell ownership been? @PatGelsinger: We are pleased with the progress we are making as a part of #DellTechnologies, a collective force comprised of #Dell, #DellEMC, #Pivotal, #RSA, #SecureWorks, #Virtustream and #VMware. This year we expect to see a quarter of the $1 billion revenue in synergies we have projected over the next two years from our alignment with Dell.  We're really pleased with this progress. Through Dell, many of our offerings are performing well, including our compute, #vSAN, #VxRail and end-user computing products. And we are seeing momentum for a number of other products such as #NSX. One place where customers experienced the power of VMware as a strategically aligned business under Dell Technologies was at this year's Dell EMC World, where I gave a keynote. Two announcements we made at Dell EMC World offer particularly compelling examples of the power of VMware and Dell Technologies. The first example was the launch of Dell EMC VDI Complete Solutions, powered by VMware Horizon. VDI Complete is an end-to-end desktop and application virtualization solution that includes everything you need to get started: the infrastructure appliances, the software, the storage and the endpoints. VDI Complete is built with best-of-breed technology from Dell Technologies. It leverages proven and trusted infrastructure appliances and endpoints from Dell and Dell EMC. It includes the VxRail Appliance family of fully integrated, preconfigured and pre-tested HCI appliances, powered by VMware vSAN. And VDI Complete takes advantage of Horizon, an industry leader in desktop and application virtualization. The second example of our compelling strength is the work we are doing with another Dell Technologies company, Pivotal, that's great for both developers and IT operators: developer-ready infrastructure. Today's new app architectures developers are building put huge pressure on IT teams to deliver a platform that offers an "on-demand and frictionless" experience for developers. But at the same time, IT teams must make sure the infrastructure also provides enterprise-grade security, compliance and scale. By bringing together Pivotal Cloud Foundry with our Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) software, we will reduce this friction between developers and IT. These are just two examples from Dell EMC World. You can expect many more in the months ahead. While many efforts are just getting started, we are seeing great early momentum. And with Dell's mid-market and public sector strength, we see many unique opportunities for VMware. Q: Has Dell been more hands-on with VMware, or has it allowed your company the same kind of autonomy it had under EMC? We absolutely remain autonomous. It's really evident if you look at the announcements we've made over the past year with our ecosystem partners, such as our cloud announcements with IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Michael Dell really understands the strength of the VMware partner ecosystem, and encourages us each and every day to innovate with and grow the ecosystem that is truly the lifeblood of our company. Q: Has the new ownership changed VMware as a company at all? In what ways? Last year, I would often tell customers, partners and employees that from the VMware perspective, the ownership change was little more than "replacing an 'E' for a 'D.'" And for the most part, that has very much been true. We remain committed to fostering an independent, open ecosystem. Dell Technologies is supportive of this approach and does not place any limits on our ability to partner and innovate. Q: How has the AWS partnership worked out? Are customers taking advantage? Currently in limited beta, VMware Cloud on AWS is a vSphere-based cloud service designed to bring together the leader in private cloud with the leader in public cloud, and will make it easier for our customers to run any application using a standard set of familiar software and tools in a consistent hybrid cloud environment. Customers will be able to run any application across vSphere-based private, public and hybrid cloud environments. It will be delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service, and customers will be able to leverage the global footprint and breadth of services from AWS. The customer interest to-date has been overwhelmingly positive, with the beta program significantly oversubscribed. The beta program is going well with early customers now on the platform, who are taking it through its paces. We're excited to bring this to market mid-year. Q: Was there disappointment that vCloud Air didn't succeed the way it was originally envisioned? I don't see it that way, and I can't think of a better home for vCloud Air than OVH. OVH is one of the largest Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS) providers in the world with more than 1 million customers and 260,000 servers deployed. A longtime VMware vCloud Air Network partner with more than 200,000 VMs from thousands of customers running vSphere Private Cloud, OVH has been recognized as Service Provider of the Year by VMware five of the last six years. OVH collaborated with us to bring its SDDC as a Service to market last year. And by adopting VMware Cloud Foundation for its Private Cloud SDDC offerings, OVH is the first European partner of VMware to integrate VMware Cloud Foundation and the SDDC platform, bringing together VMware's vSphere, vSAN and NSX into a natively integrated stack, to deliver enterprise-ready cloud infrastructure for the private and public cloud. This is a win for vCloud Air customers, who benefit from greater choice as they select from the OVH's global datacenters across four continents and experience faster workloads through the company's thousands of miles of dark fiber and 32 points of presence worldwide. I mentioned that OVH is one of our vCloud Air Network partners. The vCloud Air Network has become a strong area of growth for VMware. There are today more than 4,400 partners in the network, and they continue to increase in numbers and size. This partner network is very diverse and they're successful because they have unique specializations, whether it be geography, vertical or skill sets. We are very committed to continuing to deliver new and unique hybrid cloud capabilities across the entire vCloud Air Network ecosystem. Q: How do you see VMware's role in the public cloud evolving? VMware's cloud strategy continues to evolve based on the needs of our customers and the industry landscape. Our strategy is to bring the strength of our SDDC architecture to public clouds with our VMware Cloud Foundation, which will be delivered through our network of vCloud Air Network partners, including some big players like IBM and OVH, as well as with AWS. Given the overwhelmingly positive response from customers so far, I think we are onto something big here. We believe we offer the world's most complete and capable hybrid cloud architecture, providing customers freedom and control in their infrastructure decisions. Another element of our Cross-Cloud Architecture, VMware Cross-Cloud Services, will extend our hybrid cloud strategy to enable our customers to run, manage, secure and connect all their applications across all clouds and all devices, regardless of whether the underlying infrastructure is VMware-based. We are on track to deliver an initial set of cross-cloud services soon. One way we will be accelerating the delivery of cross-cloud management services is through our acquisition of Wavefront, an ultra-high-performance metrics monitoring service for cloud and modern application environments. Look for some really interesting stuff in the months ahead. Q: What are VMware's top priorities for the next 2-3 years? Cloud and mobility continue to be the trends that will drive VMware for years to come. You will see us deliver technology that will strengthen our leadership in the private cloud, embrace the public cloud and win mindshare for enterprises living in a hybrid cloud world. Our continued innovations in SDDC will help position enterprises to securely leverage this hybrid-cloud world and navigate the mobile-cloud era. We will continue to deliver the best solutions for enterprise mobility, as we extend our leadership in empowering digital workspaces through our end-user computing offerings. And, finally, we will continue to define the future of networking through NSX. Networking has been long overdue for innovation, and the approach we bring to the table empowers IT to become a business enabler and provide more security and productivity. Aside from the technology we'll be delivering over the next few years, I have two other priorities that continue to drive VMware's success. One is to expand our partner ecosystem. The second priority will be to drive new and expanded opportunities with the businesses that comprise Dell Technologies. As I said before, we're well on track to achieve the synergies we've aimed for, but there's still much work to be done.
https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2017/07/01/qa-with-pat-gelsinger.aspx?m=1
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