Acquisitions are the corporate world’s version of legalized gambling. Identify an opportunity, put money down and hope it pays off in the end.

By this standard, VMware Inc. has done well at the gambling table. Noteworthy examples include the acquisition of Nicira Inc. in 2012, which propelled VMware into the software-defined networking space, and AirWatch in 2014, launching the company on its path to enterprise mobility management. The key, according to VMware’s top executive, has been to let the acquired firms’ senior leadership continue doing what made them successful.

“We want them to be unleashed, that they have more power, not less, after they become part of this company,” said Pat Gelsinger (pictured), chief executive officer of VMware. “Our success rate is close to 90 percent on acquisitions, and the industry average is below 50 percent.”

Gelsinger spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during VMware’s Radio 2018 event in San Francisco last week. They discussed two of the company’s significant acquisitions, VMware’s interest in blockchain and a hint of what might be covered at the company’s major conference this summer. (* Disclosure below.)

AirWatch was a close call

The AirWatch acquisition was apparently a close call right down to decision day, according to Gelsinger. His VMware team was closely evaluating MobileIron as well.

“I went into that expecting we were going to buy MobileIron,” Gelsinger said. “We looked at those [two companies] and baked them off until almost the last day. The team came out unanimously, with my agreement, that AirWatch was the right thing.”

The acquisition of Nicira two years before led some in the industry to question VMware’s strategy. “People said at the time, ‘$1.2 billion for less than $10 million of revenue?’” Gelsinger recalled. “Now everyone says we’re brilliant. Four years of hard work on core technology and boom, we’re unquestionably the leader in software-defined networking now as the result of making a pretty bold bet at the time.”

Is VMware preparing to make a similarly bold bet on the blockchain? The company has maintained an active webpage that highlights its latest research.

“We’ve done some algorithmic breakthroughs that we believe allow blockchain to scale at close to linear scale as opposed to exponential scale,” Gelsinger said. “That’s game changing.”

VMware’s top executive was not willing to divulge specifics around expected product announcements for the company’s upcoming VMworld showcase in August, but he offered a hint that a broader view of the cloud will be part of the discussion.

“It’s public, private, telco and edge,” Gelsinger said. “The confluence of those four worlds we believe is something that VMware is uniquely positioned to be able to bring to the marketplace.”

Here’s the complete video interview, and there’s more coverage of Radio 2018 from theCUBE and SiliconANGLE. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Radio 2018. Neither VMware Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE