John Furrier and Dave Vellante of theCUBE, from the SilconANGLE Media team, sat down with Sanjay Poonen, EVP and GM of end-user computing at VMware, Inc., during VMWorld 2015 in San Francisco to ask some critical questions: Why is VMware the new big player in mobile, what philosophy has it adopted and how does it view the future of its ecosystem as the world shifts from the desktop to the mobile enterprise workspace?

Switzerland – A neutral proposal for partners and competitors

VMware operates as a “Switzerland-like company,” according to Poonen. The company maintains a neutral stance toward those it services. It sees all operating systems, application developers and even competitors as equal opportunities and views accessibility and open development as the most effective path to growth. Through partnerships with application developers like Adobe and Apple and telco’s like AT&T, it has developed a thriving ecosystem that’s growing out from underneath them.

Poonen stressed the importance of the acquisition of AirWatch by VMware and how it drove the development of the ecosystem and, in doing so, created an equation where “one plus one equals 110” with regard to the possibilities.

An ecosystem

“Any application on any device” is the key, according to Poonen. VMware provides a platform to deliver enterprise solutions for both cloud-native companies and those who have older infrastructure. Those legacy applications contained on the older client-server model can be delivered in a virtualized way to any device using VMware’s platform. This creates an end-user experience that’s similar across all devices and for all companies.

Poonen said that VMware sees mobile and HTML5 as the future long term, but he stressed the importance of accommodating all applications, not just the newer one-touch, cloud-based apps like Netflix or Uber. Many global 2000 companies are still running on the older infrastructure and, as a result, benefit hugely from utilizing VMware’s virtualization platform rather than having to redesign their infrastructure from the ground up.

APIification

VMware as a platform created an API set in partnership with Apple, Google, and other major OS players that is “an open standard,” according to Poonen, who also explained that open APIs are critical to all aspects of the platform so that “anyone can plug in.” Given the explosion of cloud computing, he also sees DevOps as the heart of the mobile cloud development movement and the ecosystem going forward.

When pressed by Furrier, he admitted that the senior management is “behind DevOps and anything else that drives the ecosystem [forward].”

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

Photo by SiliconANGLE