A driver in modernizing information technology, virtualization giant VMware Inc. is altering enterprise computing with tools that expand business agility in multicloud computing environments. Its work toward establishing True Private Cloud environments is helping legacy data centers participate in today’s emerging trends for serverless and containerized interfaces by becoming more software-defined and flexible.

As enterprises virtualize their data centers into public clouds, up the application stack and out to the edge of the computing network, how will VMware continue to differentiate its offerings while also harmonizing its strategies with those of public cloud partners who compete with it in many of its strongholds?

Looking to answer these and other questions, SiliconANGLE is at VMworld 2018, currently underway in Las Vegas, with exclusive commentary and interviews from its roving news desk theCUBE. TheCUBE coverage will begin on Monday, Aug. 27, at 10:30 a.m. PDT, and end on Wednesday, Aug. 29, at 5 p.m. PDT. (* Disclosure below.)

Demand for virtualization technologies is expanding at a rapid clip. The serverless architecture market alone is currently estimated at $4.25 billion and forecast to reach $14.93 billion by 2023 due to the ease of management and deployment and reduction of infrastructure cost it enables for business.

At the heart of today’s cloud application virtualization trend are containerization and serverless technologies. The former is an approach encapsulating software to efficiently run unchanged on many platforms, with a market expected to exceed $3.5 billion by 2024. The latter is a paradigm that virtualizes cross-platform access to application functionality while sparing IT professionals the burden of managing containers, virtual machines and other runtime computing environments.

Businesses in all industries are looking for ways to engage in a rapidly modernizing, multicloud marketplace, and those that are not cloud-native require custom support solutions in the management of disparate mainframe, public and private cloud systems. Since its restructuring in the wake of Dell’s EMC acquisition, VMware has built a substantial and innovative software-defined data center portfolio, with an increasing focus on containerization, serverless, edge computing, cybersecurity, cloud application management, multicloud management automation and software-defined networking.

VMware’s reported revenue in its fiscal second quarter was higher than estimated at $2.17 billion, up 13 percent year-over-year. And in July the business was recognized as a Leader for Unified Endpoint Management Tools in the “Gartner Magic Quadrant” report for its efficiency and security innovations in enterprise computing.

The company took a substantial step forward into the cloud last year through its partnership Amazon Web Services Inc., which allowed for seamless migrations between the AWS platform’s popular public cloud and customers’ software-defined data centers. The move gave VMware businesses the opportunity to leverage AWS’ public cloud offerings, further establishing the Dell subsidiary as an all-inclusive enterprise infrastructure offering.

VMware has also expanded its portfolio through an integration with IBM and one with Google Cloud Platform that allows on-premises Kubernetes container orchestration through Pivotal Container Service. James Kobielus, an analyst with Wikibon, owned by the same company as SiliconANGLE, predicts these partnerships will be deepened as VMware explores expanded possibilities in the cloud but also sees the organization angling for new ways to differentiate itself within the market.

“Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google and IBM all have their respective Kubernetes engines,” Kobielus said. “In an industry shifting inexorably toward the public cloud, VMware finds itself increasingly challenged to distinguish its own cloud application ecosystem offerings from those of partners.”

To remain competitive and curb partner reliance, VMware will need to move past its core offerings of virtualization via serverless and containers to provide improvements in end-to-end platform management, explore edge virtualization avenues through its Pulse IoT Center and even discover new data platforms in blockchain or other tech.

“Strategic moves would diversify VMware beyond the substantial revenue reliance it currently has on the vSAN virtual storage solution and NSX network virtualization offerings,” Kobielus said. “If it doesn’t continue investing in these areas and other application ecosystem platforms, VMware risks falling further behind.”

VMware’s numerous developments and integrations over the past two years point to a larger strategy for the cloud support company. But will VMware be able to balance partner-led growth into hybrid cloud opportunities against the need to ensure that its partners — which also compete with VMware in many core markets — don’t eclipse its value proposition and induce partners and customers to hitch their wagons to public cloud providers instead? All this and more will be explored at this year’s VMworld event.

Keynote speakers at VMworld include Pat Gelsinger, VMware’s chief executive officer; Ray O’Farrell, VMware executive vice president and chief technology officer; Sanjay Poonen, VMware’s chief operating officer of customer operations; AWS Chief Executive Andy Jassy; and Malala Yousafzai, an activist, Oxford student and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

There are various ways to watch all of theCUBE interviews that will be taking place at VMworld 2018, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube. There’s also all the coverage from this year’s event on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE’s dedicated website and Ustream

All of theCUBE’s exclusive interviews from VMworld 2018 will be available on theCUBE’s dedicated website.

You can also watch all the interviews on our two dedicated Ustream channels, here and here.

Watch on the SiliconANGLE YouTube channel

All of theCUBE interviews from VMworld 2018, which runs Aug. 26-30, will also be loaded onto SiliconANGLE’s dedicated YouTube channel.

Cubecasts

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on both SoundCloud and iTunes, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE at VMworld 2018

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE include VMworld 2018 keynote speakers Pat Gelsinger, Ray O’Farrell, and Sanjay Poonen.

Other guests include Michael Dell, chief executive officer of Dell Technologies Inc.; Peter McKay, co-chief executive officer and president of Veeam Software; Sandy Carter, vice president of AWS; Geoff Waters, vice president of global cloud sales at VMware; Peter Fitzgibbon, vice president and general manager, VMware Practice, at Rackspace; and Bask Iyer, chief information officer of VMware.

TheCUBE will also interview Keith Moran, vice president of Nutanix; Robin Matlock, chief marketing officer of VMware; Andrew Hillier, chief technology officer and co-founder of Densify; Beth Phalen, president of the data protection division at Dell EMC; Eric Herzog, CMO and vice president global channel sales at IBM Storage Systems; Mimi Spier, vice president, internet of things business, at VMware; and Ajay Patel, senior vice president at VMware.

TheCUBE’s lineup also includes Lynn Lucas, chief marketing officer of Cohesity; Lee Caswell, vice president of products at VMware; Yanbing Li, senior vice president and general manager, storage and availability at VMware; Brian Reagan, chief marketing officer of Actifio; Devon Reed, director of product management at Dell EMC; Ben Gibson, chief marketing officer of Nutanix; Calline Sanchez, vice president of IBM Enterprise Systems Storage; and Eric Herzog, chief marketing officer and vice president global channel sales at IBM Storage Systems.

Livestream of VMworld 2018

If you are unable to attend the VMworld 2018 event in Las Vegas, you can still catch a livestream of the General Sessions here. You can also access the VMworld on-demand video library here.

(* Disclosure: VMware sponsored coverage of VMworld, and some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. Sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: VMware