Every time the enterprise has seen the influx of a new technology, VMware has been quick to hop on to the bandwagon.

The company did it with virtualization, the software-defined datacentre, and it is now pulling an encore in the hybrid cloud space.

VMware’s growth and near-omnipresence is guided by a simple principle – it wants to be the essential building block of the digital future.

And propelling the company towards this vision is its focus on strategic partnership and alliances. 

In a tête-à-tête with Pradeepto Dey, Director – strategic partner and alliances at VMware, he explains how the virtualization ace is consolidating its partner base and how the CIOs are opening up to the software-defined datacentre.

Edited excerpts: 

Could you give us an overview of VMware’s strategic alliances and how they add to the company’s firepower?

We have 20 global heavyweights like Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, HCL and Accenture in our SISO group – that’s System Integrators and System Outsourcers.

  There is no partner or customer who does not want a skin in the game. Wherever we go, whoever we talk to, SDDC has been the pivotal point for those customers in their journey to the cloud.

Pradeepto Dey

Under Technology Alliance Partnerships (TAP), we focus on rudimentary versions of independent software vendors programs, where we do business with Palo Alto, Symantec, Trend Micro, Juniper etc.

The vCloud program brings VMware managed cloud services on AWS. It is yet to go live in India, but is nevertheless one of the strong pillars for our company.

We are building a robust Managed Service Provider (MSP) program, especially for mobility. We are planning to augment this with a lot of other cloud service programs which are inbuilt with other MSP programs. 

Let’s zero down on your technology alliance partnerships. Could you illustrate how VMware’s tie up with these companies puts them on the fast track to transformation?

Let’s take Wipro for instance. With the help of our workspace technology, Wipro created seamless drop-in-the-box applications for new employees, enabling them with access management and on-boarding even before his first lunch in the company.

With HPE, in the next 60 days, we will be taking customers through the entire experience of Synergy and VMware Cloud Foundation – It’s quite simple and provides on-the-fly propositions. 

In IBM’s case, we helped them bridge the gap between legacy and new age devices.

With an increasing number of CIOs turning towards hyperconverged infra, how is VMware positioned to cater to the market? What’s your winning mantra in HCI?

In the hyperconverged space, it's about giving the customer a choice to decide if he wants to continue working with his favourite hardware vendor.

With vSAN ReadyNode, customers have the freedom to choose between on-prem and cloud.

We have vCloud provider partners – a network of CSPs who can stand-up in HCI architecture. With Dell EMC VxRail, we leverage our channels and theirs through close collaboration. 

How has the Indian market responded to the adoption of software-defined datacenters? 

Software-defined everything is what everybody is currently talking about. In 2011, Raghu Raghuram (COO – Products and Cloud Services, VMware) was the first one to paint a picture of the SDDC vision to the world.

Since then, we have seen customers being immensely enthusiastic about its uptake. There is no partner or customer who does not want a skin in the game. Wherever we go, whoever we talk to, SDDC has been the pivotal point for those customers in their journey to the cloud.

This is irrespective of the cycle of adoption they are in. It’s one of the crucial steps in moving to a hybrid cloud environment. Additionally, with SDDCs, CIOs have highlighted that they no longer get caught up in keeping the lights on. 

The customer needs freedom, choice and control. CIOs today believe that most of their time and money has to be spent on something that’s aiding the business and fostering innovation. Innovation is no longer a choice.

VMware recently acquired CloudHealth. Do you think the company is now better positioned to expand services across AWS or Azure? 

There's a long way for it to get 'productized'. Two years ago, Pat announced at VMworld, that there could be multi-cloud, cross-cloud collaboration services. We are taking steps to make that vision into reality.
 
Again, providing a choice to the customer -  Who may want to run the workload on premise, through an MSP partner, or the public cloud. 

Now the new world wants to leverage not just a private cloud, but public clouds as well. VMware can provide the choice to a customer through a multi-cloud management platform. This will help the customer to manage cost, usage, security parameters, and performance on a single interface. This is where CloudHealth would have its benefits.

As told to Soumik Ghosh.