In October 2014, EMC acquired VCE Company, LLC from Cisco Systems, Inc. A year later, Dell, Inc. announced its merger with EMC to create the second-largest tech merger of all time. After two highly publicized acquisitions, where does VCE stand with its partnerships and customers with the upcoming blending of all companies involved?

Praveen Akkiraju, CEO of VCE, joined Dave Vellante, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to answer questions about the status of VCE’s role within Dell.

Change is good

Vellante asked Akkiraju about the change to his world.

“We have been able to broaden our strategy and accelerate our business,” Akkiraju said. “Converging systems is now the de facto way most customers are building data centers. It’s been a very interesting, high-growth year.”

With the world going “bonkers” for converged infrastructures and hyper-converge, VCE has been under pressure to expand business. According to Akkiraju, the company’s evolution has enabled growth. “EMC allowed us to break out of a joint venture structure that confined us to a certain set of technology choices,” he said. He pointed to product rollouts announced during the August VMworld event and noted, “Now the company can engineer systems with best of bread components with the intent of hyper-convergence and create a new system called racks.”

The Cisco relationship

Vellante asked about VCE’s partnership with Cisco. Akkiraju responded by saying the partnership is based on three pillars: common financial interest for both parties, a strong strategic alignment in order to bring to market in the fastest way possible, and customer focus, which allows VCE to scale and support Cisco and build customer roadmaps.

In terms of the Dell partnership, Akkiraju said that the merger offers a combined 22 categories and a large scope of solutions that VCE can tap into to solve customer problems. He feels each project has different swim lanes, and it is important to leverage what Dell brings to the table without derailing a successful product.

Akkiraju is excited about the new opportunities in the industry, saying,” We are the leader because we listen to customers.”

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

Photo by SiliconANGLE