Workloads are territorial beasts. Many applications and process chains are designed to run in one place, in one environment. Updating workloads to new technology is hard enough, so migrating company processes to the cloud represents a real challenge. Fortunately, companies exist to help businesses figure out the benefits of remote computing and take their applications to the cloud.

To learn more about this new type of business, Stu Miniman (@stu) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, visited the VMworld 2016 conference in Las Vegas. There, they spoke to Michele Borovac, VP of Marketing at Velostrata, Inc., and Sash Sunkara, CEO of RackWare, Inc.

Cloud options and baskets

The discussion started with an overview of the companies themselves. Borovac described Velostrata as a software company focused on helping organizations move workloads to the cloud and back. Sunkara mentioned RackWare does migrations, along with disaster and backup recovery as a service.

Borovac stated that Velostrata believes companies are trying to get a handle on the public cloud and how to take advantages of the cost efficiencies. Sunkara added that they’ve been talking about hybrid clouds for years. There are certain applications that remain on-premises and those that can go into public and private clouds. Businesses are not going to fit it all into one basket.

“You absolutely need to have something that lives everywhere,” Sunkara said.

Testing and rebuilding

Sunkara then elaborated on the challenges of migrating to the cloud. People are not going to rewrite their applications, she said. There are a lot of existing applications where they need technologies like RackWare’s to take advantage of the cloud.

Velostrata also had its own solutions. Borovac explained that her company allows clients to test the water by inserting drivers and everything else needed to adapt applications to the cloud. She mentioned one customer with 2,000 applications that was trying to figure out what worked and what needed to be rewritten.

People are realizing it’s not about rack-and-stack, Sunkara said. It’s about helping application developers speed up their cycle and gaining a competitive edge.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE