The EMC Federation of businesses recently acquired Virtustream, Inc., a cloud software and services company that caters to enterprise companies. With the acquisition, EMC customers have a single source for hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Before the acquisition, Virtustream enjoyed strong commercial business, with such clients as Coca-Cola, Domino Sugar, Lexmark and others as customers. Stu Miniman and Brian Gracely, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, wanted to know: Why the move?

“Late last year and early this year, I evaluated what our IPO potential was,” said Virtustream founder and CEO Rodney Rogers. “As often happens, some suitors emerged. At the end of the day we chose this path with EMC. When you’re a venture-backed company, economics really drive where you end up. I’m glad we chose this path. It’s been an extraordinary three months or so.”

Focusing on I/O-intensive mission-critical enterprise apps

Virtustream’s focus on I/O-intensive mission-critical enterprise applications such as SAP S/4HANA, among others, didn’t exactly make Rogers and cofounder Kevin Reid the most popular guys in the high-tech space. “We were the least hip guys in the cloud,” Rogers said with a laugh. “We are East Coast guys; we grew up around enterprise and both came from the IT services sectors. We knew that enterprise spent at least 60 to 70 percent of its IT budget on these mission-critical, core apps. When these companies put these apps in the cloud, they can’t take risk around their revenue cycles. It’s a lot of hard engineering, but it’s driven by the I/O intensive nature of the app itself.”

Enterprises have other choices when it comes to cloud offerings. Virtustream’s alliance with the EMC Federation will surely keep them at the top of their game.

“We’re going to keep doing what were doing and leverage a number of assets across the Federation to accomplish that,” said Rogers. “If you’re chasing the tail lights of another companies go-to-market, you’re not going to win, especially given who those players are and the type of market share they command.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE