Another VMworld event has wrapped, and word on the street is that, while it is still the conference of the infrastructure industry, this year there was nothing especially sexy about it. Maybe we have just gotten used to an atmosphere of flashy disruptors threatening to shift the sands, so now the established is associated with the boring. The reality, according to theCUBE analysts, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, is that VMware, Inc. simply doesn’t have to try as hard as up and comers because they’ve already proven so much.

Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) of The CTO Advisor, said, “For me, I don’t think VMware is in a position where they need to excite people.” He stated that the company is more concerned with showing customers how they can rely on VMware into the future, and, “They laid out that path extremely well throughout this show.”

John Mark Troyer (@jtroyer), CEO of TechReckoning, agreed, saying, “VMware’s job is not to be the cool kid on the block. VMware’s job is to be the responsible grownup that is going to give you a place and a home for your production-ready applications.”

Container controversy

Troyer went on to talk about how Docker containers, often looked at as a threat to VMware, is faltering.

“Right now, the container world is kind of ripping itself apart. There was talk this week about a Docker fork. That whole ecosystem is in turmoil, and one of the reasons is it isn’t stable. The code isn’t stable, the APIs aren’t stable,” he said.

Digitization vortex

Marc Farley (@gofarley) of VulcanCast, mentioned theCUBE guest Matt Rademacher of Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW) when speaking about the imperative for companies to digitize. He said since DSW competes with Zappos and Amazon, it is under a lot of pressure.

“You think, ‘Well, does the shoe business really have to do this?’ Yeah. They’ve got to go DevOps, and they’ve got to be really quick and agile,” he said.

Identity politics

Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, said he believes that the Dell-EMC merger should not seek to strip VMware of its unique identity and branding.

“If VMware can be left mostly on its own and maybe even pull out the EMC — how they were interacting on some of those pieces — there’s some acceleration VMware could do.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE