SiliconANGLE theCube hosts John Furrier and Jeff Frick wrapped up the third day of VMworld 2013 with an in-depth review of VMware’s role in the user-led transformation of IT.

The virtualization giant is trying to help businesses move at the speed of business rather than the speed of infrastructure, Jeff says. John draws comparisons between VMware and SAP, and notes that the latter is disrupting the mobile enterprise with high visualization applications for decision makers. Both vendors are working to deliver enabling technologies that can effectively address evolving user expectations.

“VMware split vCloud Director into vCloud and vCloud Automation. That’s a small little piece of news but very relevant because you’re looking at the orchestration, one of the things that make those end-user experiences happen, is about putting the right technology in the right group,” John says. “The management and automation is the critical differentiator for a lot of these vendors because if infrastructure-as-a-service gets commoditized, if there’s thousands of new services out there, and you got OpenStack involved, management is the key to success and we’ve been hearing that throughout the show.”

Jeff highlights that VMware has come a long way since 2003, when the first annual VMworld conference was held. Now that it has popularized server virtualization, the company is pushing into the storage and networking layers, as well as the public cloud, with new solutions such NSX and vCloud Hybrid Service.

John notes that unlike many other large tech firms, VMware has not lost its “cultural tech mojo.” He adds that the vendor’s top brass is focusing on business growth in an to effort to establish a foothold in tomorrow’s data center.

Click the video below to watch the full discussion, including commentary.