

The tech world changes, but legacy systems endure. That’s simply the truth of the modern business environment. Companies know they must transform in this digital revolution, but they’re also tied to ancient systems filled with custom applications. To solve this problem, companies turn toward partners who can help them navigate these strange new waters.
To shed some light on the issue of upgrading systems, John Furrier (@furrier) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, visited the VMworld conference in Las Vegas. There, they joined Mark Ward, chief operating officer at Cobalt Iron, and Tim Conley, owner of ATS Group and Galileo Performance Explorer.
The conversation opened with a look at the problems customers face. Ward mentioned the number-one issue his customers saw was the question of legacy systems. He described how his company is solving this problem by making systems that are easy to consume, cover different use cases and drive down costs.
Ward then added that the job of SaaS (Software as a Service) is to reduce the complexity of the tech stacks so the company can focus on serving their customers. Conley furthered the point by adding in virtualization. He stated that he doesn’t have one customer who isn’t running VMware in production.
The topic then moved to the Cloud. Conley explained how his company was figuring out what is fact and fiction in the Cloud. He wanted to know what the Cloud means to his customers. Ward pointed out that the Cloud doesn’t fit for all use cases. Conley followed up, saying that from a performance perspective, customers need to figure out what they should and should not move to the Cloud.
“Storage, data, data protection are big, big parts of the Cloud value proposition,” he said.
Conley revealed that his customers come back from industry events saying they have to go to the Cloud. They’re scared of the Cloud, but they want to do it. He described his company’s job as figuring out what Cloud vendors are real and which of the customer’s workloads will benefit from moving to the Cloud.
Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld 2016.
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