VMware CEO on Broadcom deal, how 'cloud-smart' is replacing 'cloud-first', and renewed HPE pact

Raghu Raghuram kicked off the vendor’s annual VMware Explore event in Barcelona with some game-changing announcements

CRN reports from Barcelona, Spain where we are attending VMware's annual event. It's under a fresh name - VMware Explore Europe 2022 (formerly VMworld).

The conference hosted keynotes from several of the vendor's top executives, who updated partners and customers on its pipeline of innovations and announcements.

VMware CEO, Raghu Raghuram took to the stage to commence the event and lift the lid on what to expect from the group in the near future.

CRN has highlighted the main takeaways from head honcho's speech.

On impending acquisition by Broadcom...

The news that has been brewing for months has almost come to a head with the announcement that VMware's shareholders have voted to approve the pending merger with Broadcom.

Overall, 352.6 million shares were cast in favour of being acquired by Broadcom — 99.61 percent of the total vote — while 681,000 shares were cast in opposition and 687,000 shares were listed as having abstained.

VMware said there are 424.4 million shares of the company's common stock that were eligible to cast votes. Of those, 353.9 million voted.

"Once the acquisition is completed, VMware will become the software arm of Broadcom," Raghuram told the audience.

"For the last many months I've been spending a lot of time with Hock Tan, educating him about this wonderful community and the portfolio of VMware solutions, and the innovation that we bring to the table."

During a panel Q&A, Raghuram was asked for more clarity on what this means for VMware given Broadcom already has its CA Technologies and Symantec businesses.

"It's up to Broadcom to structure its company. It will have the final word," Raghuram said.

"Hock Tan said Broadcom will broadly have two businesses and all software business will be under the VMware umbrella."

[Continue reading to hear more of the announcements made during VMware's ongoing Explore Europe conference... ]

VMware CEO on Broadcom deal, how 'cloud-smart' is replacing 'cloud-first', and renewed HPE pact

Raghu Raghuram kicked off the vendor’s annual VMware Explore event in Barcelona with some game-changing announcements

On 'cloud smart' replacing 'cloud first'...

Setting the scene, Raghuram detailed how over the last few months, the macro environment for everyone has become adverse.

As a result, he said there are some challenges that are front and centre for audience members that are taking up time and energy.

The VMware CEO highlighted budgeting, increasing cyber threats and energy consumption problems as some major challenges.

"Despite all of this, when I've talked to CEOs and CIOs, they are steadfast in their priorities in continuing and accelerating the race to become digital smart," he said.

Raghuram went onto to say how CEOs are eager to go "cloud first".

"Now in the last two or three years I've been asked a very different question by CEOs, and the question now is, ‘why is it taking so much time? Why can't we go faster?'

He continued to outline time constraining barriers such as the skills gap and using too many different clouds.

"And so now we have very fragmented operations and security that is not only slowing you down, but in fact, is increasing the risk in your organisation."

He dubbed this "cloud chaos".

"The good news is many of you have started figuring out a different approach, that we call cloud smart," Raghuram said.

"The fundamental idea behind cloud smart is very simple. It is that the application determines the cloud strength. The application determines the location.

"So we believe cloud smart is replacing cloud first, as the modern approach to digital transformation."

"We see a lot of debate all the time," he continued. "Containers here, Kubernetes there, public or private, VMs or containers, etc, etc.

"In my opinion, that is the wrong debate to have because those are all a means to an end.

"The debate should be about what does your application portfolio look like? What applications have to be cloud native and what applications have to be enterprise?

"And regardless of how they are written? How are they formed together? How do we accelerate the path to production? How do we manage and secure all these and connect all these? And that is the central story behind cloud smart."

VMware CEO on Broadcom deal, how 'cloud-smart' is replacing 'cloud-first', and renewed HPE pact

Raghu Raghuram kicked off the vendor’s annual VMware Explore event in Barcelona with some game-changing announcements

On advancing its partnership with HPE...

VMware has had a partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) for the past 20 years.

Raghuram announced the next phase of the duo's partnership with HPE GreenLake for VMware, bringing together HPE GreenLake and VMware Cloud to deliver an integrated solution with a pay-as-you-go hybrid cloud consumption model.

HPE GreenLake for VMware will provide customers with an integrated and modern hybrid cloud experience.

"So all of you can get a simple pay-as-you-go consumption model in your private cloud," Raghuram said to the packed room of customers and partners.

Customers will benefit from a cloud experience coupled with the benefit of purchasing only the amount of infrastructure they require through a pay-as-you-go cloud consumption model.

They will also have the flexibility to determine the best environment for operating their hybrid cloud.

VMware Cloud will be fully integrated across the HPE GreenLake portfolio including HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise and customers will be able to deploy on-premises, in colocation facilities or at the edge, all managed by HPE GreenLake.

VMware CEO on Broadcom deal, how 'cloud-smart' is replacing 'cloud-first', and renewed HPE pact

Raghu Raghuram kicked off the vendor’s annual VMware Explore event in Barcelona with some game-changing announcements

On VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal....

"Another one of our long standing partners is Equinix, and we are excited to announce VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal," VMware's CEO said.

Equinix has 240 datacentres in 70 metro locations across the globe.

"And now you'll be able to locate your latency-sensitive applications closer to where the users or closer to whatever those applications are controlling thanks to this VMware Cloud and Equinix Metal offering," Raghuram added.

The new distributed cloud service will deliver a more performant, secure, and cost-effective cloud option to support enterprise applications, VMware claims.

The service will combine VMware-managed and supported cloud infrastructure as-a-Service with Equinix's interconnected, global Bare Metal as-a-Service offering.

It will extend customers' cloud environments into distributed metro locations to satisfy business-critical performance demands at the edge while enabling them to preserve the integrity of enterprise workloads.