 Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS re-invent 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE, with wall-to-wall coverage. Sumit Awan, president of VMware, is joining me today. Sumit, welcome to theCUBE. Great to be here, John, good to see you. You know, I remember Ragu when we were talking to him, when the original AWS deal we covered many, many years ago, it seems like yesterday. But since then, again, there was a lot of people who were kind of looking at that deal, not understanding. We were very clear that we thought that that was going to create clarity. If you look at the success of VMware cloud strategy, since that moment in time, it really has been an amazing run for VMware. And so congratulations and looking at that trajectory. We're going into an even bigger wave now. We're seeing coming out of the pandemic with Edge, 5G, cloud native going mainstream. This is like another tipping point, another inflection point. However you want to look at it, this is really big. Can you share your thoughts on how you see your customers and AWS customers coming together with the VMware? Yeah, we're excited about sort of this phase era, whatever you want to call it, where customers are looking at just the power of cloud for all of their applications. And in fact, what we call multi-cloud, where they're looking at private cloud, public cloud, sometimes even multiple public clouds and Edge and how they are going to leverage all of this power of cloud across all their applications. And you know, we're excited about the partnership. Like you said, John, we did with the AWS. Customers have last two years, have had a hard time modernizing their infrastructure and now they're looking at their tier one applications which are oftentimes the lifeline of their businesses and they have not been, the infrastructure has not been modernized. And our partnership with AWS brings to the customers a fully modernized infrastructure as a service which is optimized for their tier one application. So they can embrace the power of cloud not just for new modern applications that they have built for running their new digital services but also all of their tier one enterprise applications. Instantly modernize their infrastructure, secure it, run their tier one applications through the power and the scale of public cloud and then gradually start modernizing. Like you mentioned, modernization of application is a key element and we have provided a rich stack for customers to be able to build their new SRE and DevOps practices and enable developers to have a fast journey to build these modern applications leveraging the power of public cloud and in fact multiple public clouds seamlessly. And we're extending the same thing to the edge. So it's actually exciting times in the industry. We call it the multi-cloud era and VMware is enabling our customers what we call smart as pack to cloud. Well congratulations first of all on the new independent company VMware. That's great news. You guys now are on your own, a very valuable company in and of itself but under Dell Technologies, now out on the open. And you know, we've been covering VMware. We've been to the, the queue's been to VMworld every year and looking at this year's VMworld and looking at VMware for the old folks, the veterans, VMware has been synonymous with operations, IT operations, running workloads in data centers to power business enterprise classic, you know, innovation for business value. Now with the cloud you see operations, DevOps being discussed in security. You're talking about as you mentioned SRE, the workloads, the game is still the same but it is shifting landscape wise. You got cloud scale, you mentioned on premises and multi-cloud. So with operations going to full scale, your customers are building and running their businesses on VMware and AWS and other clouds. This is the same game but different world. Can you just share what's the current similarities and differences from what operations used to be going from a workload standpoint? At John, you're 100% right. You know, the need for operational scale and discipline is always there, has always been there. And now it's extended to potentially a lot more complex world of what we call multi-cloud. In this new world, you know, the whole aspect of operations is no longer the world of system admins where you would have people pushing buttons to control the infrastructure and you know, it's a lot more where infrastructure is now designed to be managed as a code. There is a lot more of what is considered shift left where more and more of power of orchestrating the infrastructure is given to the developers because there oftentimes the sort of ones who understand the business logic and understand how the infrastructure is required to scale up and down the applications. And so along those two key trends, there is still a critical element of how a platform is needed for customers to operate that environment, okay? You can't sort of have operational discipline be lost because just because you have the paradigm changed and that's what VMware is enabling. Now with VMware stack, you can manage your entire infrastructure, not just public cloud, but even private cloud as a code. You can create a platform where developers get this freedom and a great experience to leverage any public cloud to build their services and work closely with DevOps and SRE functions to make sure that the orchestration of all of their cloud environments in a multi-cloud environment is available and enabled seamlessly through Kubernetes. This doesn't have to be done through virtual machines anymore. This could be virtual machines or Kubernetes orchestrated containers across all clouds. And so bottom line, operations has always been critical, but it has been done in a certain way. In the world of multi-cloud, it's changed where it's more and more of infrastructure as a service, shift left to developers and cybersecurity is extremely important where it needs to be built into the platform. And that's what VMware solutions are now enabling for our customers. Yeah, and for all the young guns coming into the business that are developers, the DevOps are still the same game. You've got developers and you got operations now at large scale. And I think this whole multi-cloud is really kind of the multi-vendor equation. So I think, you know, clear synergies and congratulations on the trajectory. I think it's really relevant. Can you take us through on how this means for the businesses? Because at VMworld this year, you guys talked about cross-cloud services. Can you talk about what that is and what does it mean for the customers and what's the focus that reinvent this year? Yeah, so VMware this year at our VMworld announced our sort of portfolio for enabling customers to embrace the power of multi-cloud easily. We call it cross-cloud services and they fit into five major categories. First is our cloud infrastructure that is available through partnership with all major cloud providers. We started with AWS and we expanded with all major cloud providers including Azure, Google, Ali in China, Oracle, IDM. Secondly, our cloud native platform. Cloud native platform is where it doesn't have to be traditional VM-based applications. Applications built using modern cloud native technologies container-based or that can be orchestrated using Kubernetes that are operationalized using our platform where customers can get any Kubernetes on any public cloud and operate them in a consistent and scalable fashion and enable a great developer experience at the same time. Third is our networking and security services which are underlay across both our cloud infrastructure as well as cloud native services. Fourth is cloud management, how infrastructure as a code and shift-left developer function can be enabled through our management technologies designed for both private and public cloud, both VM-based or VMware-based infrastructure as well as native public cloud infrastructure. And then lastly our workspace and edge services enabling customers to build today's requirements of people working from anywhere and an anywhere workspace experience for a hybrid workforce. So these are our five cloud services, John that we call collectively as cross-cloud services which enable customers to embrace the power of multi-cloud easily. These are modular, easy to acquire services designed to run across all clouds. And obviously for customers looking at leveraging the power of AWS, these services enable you to embrace AWS at the best to speak. Yeah, and I think anything cross-cloud or multi-cloud you know, the ease of use and choice is key. You have to have choice, that's cool. Open source is driving a lot of that which I want to get to with the Tanzu but you guys have had a great partnership with AWS both on a development level as well as a business partnership. Take us through the evolution of the partnership between VMware and AWS because I know Ragu was really into this with Pat Gelsinger and then Andy Jassy. We covered that. But if you look up what Amazon Web Services is doing under Adam's leadership now they're going to set the table for the next 15 years. And you got Outpost is going to be a big part of that. You got all the cloud native, you know high level services inside the cloud, inside AWS as well. So take us through your view of the evolution of the VMware AWS partnership. Yeah, I mean AWS and VMware started our partnership for those of you who don't know we started our partnership about five years ago where we announced the availability of VMware cloud on AWS, which is all of our fully sort of modernized software defined data center infrastructure available for running tier one enterprise applications on top of AWS, you know all of their data centers globally. So our software with AWS hardware together as a managed service means customers could get fully modern infrastructure without refactoring any of their applications they can run on AWS. And that relationship has grown significantly. We have continued to enable more and more sort of different sized sort of platform infrastructure that we have continually made available. And the business has led to great success we have at this point in time, you know thousands of customers, joint customers running all of their tier one business applications whether it's banking to healthcare to insurance on top of our infrastructure and it's been great. We then gradually expanded that partnership to other industries. Now we have customers in telcos running major telco cloud on top of our platform. We've expanded our partnership to other solutions. We brought our Tanzu, which is our cloud native platform for managing native cloud services on AWS in an enterprise fashion connected to all of their enterprise requirements as well in the marketplace. We have brought other offerings, including security services on AWS marketplace for customers to get. So, over time- Hold on, hold on, if you don't mind me asking. So you saying that Tanzu, Carbon Black and VMware cloud are all in AWS marketplace? They're all available in AWS marketplace and they're all available to be transacted through, you know, even just the AWS is EDP. So the commercial relationship with AWS has strengthened significantly over time. EDP is their sales channel. That's their direct- EDP is their enterprise agreement. That's right, their enterprise- So you go to market together with AWS under the marketplace. Strong supports support integration so that customers can get joint support with us. So over time, the technology integration that started has led to strong commercial integrations helping making sure customers can get one commercial agreement and one support agreement with VMware and AWS together. And that's been great for customers. Customers have loved it and we are continuing to build upon it. Your second question was, well, what happens when AWS has new modern native services? And what we have done is, for example, our Tanzu solution, it is integrated with AWS's EKS. So their Kubernetes distribution can be fully operationalized as well as a great developer experience can be created for AWS native services using VMware Tanzu solution. So we're embracing the power of more and more AWS services for our enterprise solutions. You know, I love following VMware, especially and AWS, both two companies, both very technical, pragmatic, very smart companies. So congratulations on success. I got to answer from a customer perspective as you look at the landscape on the commercial side. What are the customers saying? What's the big summary of where they're at? What's the vibe? Where's their head? What are they thinking? Take us through some anecdotal customer sentiment or data. Yeah, our customers tell us three things consistently. Number one, they say that they have, at this point in time, just decided that they are going to have some kind of a black solution which will span multiple clouds, which could have public cloud, private cloud, and edge or multiple public clouds. In fact, we just did a recent survey, John, and we found that 74% of our customers are already using multiple clouds and 90 plus percent said that they want that freedom and choice to be able to use cloud of their choice and not be encumbered by any particular sort of, just choice that they make. So that's the first trend we see. Secondly, customers want to modernize their infrastructure and modernize their applications. They haven't been able to do so over the course of the last two years and modernization is a key requirement. And the VMware and AWS gives them that ability to do so now at this point in time, very, very quickly. And then third thing we hear is that customers are looking for some solution where cybersecurity is built in. It's something where they are standardizing their enterprise requirements via a platform which has a great experience for the developers, great operational scale and cybersecurity. And these are the three trends, John, that VMware is solely focused on as part of our services and solutions and our partnership with AWS. So it's always great to talk to you. One final point, I want to get your reaction to. VMware has made a couple of big bets in the past decade. One, the deal with Amazon, which opened the door for multi-cloud. That path is clear, cloud scale, check the box, well done. And the other one was cloud native technologies and Kubernetes specifically. Two big bets that no one saw coming. Turns out they turned out pretty well. What's your reaction to that? Would you agree? And how would you talk about those two events? Yeah, we at VMware always consider sort of how we are going to keep innovating. And the way we see the world is follow where the applications are going. It's pretty simple, okay? We saw that a few years ago where cloud and container technologies are where the applications are going and we innovated through both our organic investments as well as inorganic investments to bring our VMware cloud solutions and Tanzu solutions. And similarly, John, we're looking at now the next generation of applications where we fast forward three years down the road. We envision a great degree of innovation is going to happen in the edge. And that's the third sort of area of innovation for us so that public cloud or multi-cloud cloud native applications as well as edge applications can all be orchestrated using VMware's cross cloud services. So Mr. Wang, president of VMware, thanks for coming on theCUBE. We appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of the event. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching.