VMworld 2015 kicked off August 30 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The five-day event brings together enterprise IT technical professionals and decision-makers looking for the latest in cloud technology and virtualization. Don’t miss theCUBE broadcasting live from the event from August 31-September 2.

Live interviews on theCUBE from VMworld 2015 include Dheeraj Pandey, CEO, Nutanix, Inc.; Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware, Inc.; and Jayshree Ullal, president & CEO, Arista Networks, Inc.; as well as many more industry execs.

Where to watch

Watch theCUBE, from the SilconANGLE Media team, live during VMworld 2015, and make sure to join theCUBE’s CrowdChat to voice your own opinions live during the event. Also, make sure to check in during the event with theCUBE hosts John Furrier, Dave Velante, Stu Miniman, and Brian Gracely via Twitter.

What to expect

Analysts on theCUBE are prepared to discuss VMware’s evolving game plan in the data center in response to new challenges, including its virtualization business being squeezed by cloud computing, containerization and “as-a-service” offerings.

“We’re seeing VMware in the midst of a massive transition,” said Dave Vellante, cofounder & co-CEO of SiliconANGLE Media. “You don’t hear VMware talking about (the ecosystem) any more. Instead we’ve seen a navigation through that ecosystem play, and now we see VMware grabbing networking and storage. With all this [EMC] Federation talk coming back together, maybe EMC is thinking of taking a more Oracle-like approach – so there’s going to be an interesting undercurrent to VMworld this year.”

Another key issue at hand: How seriously should the industry and EMC Federation customers take VMware’s vCloud Air? And can it compete with IaaS leaders like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and IBM Softlayer?

Find out what top officials from VMware and other EMC Federation members have to say about these issues and more on theCUBE.