Before the availability of streamlined hybrid platform management, the complexities of cloud migration threatened to impede modernization at legacy enterprises with increasingly insufficient data infrastructures. Through its breakthroughs in hyperconverged innovation, VMware Inc. enabled that public cloud accessibility for traditional on-premises organizations and proved its ability to link disparate, complex platforms in one streamlined service.

With significant progress in its core cloud migration business, VMware is now aiming to extend that bridge to the edge.

“We want to focus on infrastructure, but we want to help our customers go to the edge and start to embrace this new opportunity in the industry to be able to take advantage of this data,” said Mimi Spier (pictured), vice president of internet of things business at VMware.

With a track record in uniting partners and technologies to drive industry transformation forward, Spier is leading the VMware and Dell EMC charge to help customers leverage internet of things benefits and engage in a new era of tech.

Spier recently spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. (* Disclosure below.)

This week, theCUBE spotlights Mimi Spier in our Women in Tech feature.

Giving IoT the multicloud treatment

In a market increasingly focused on automation and predictive self-optimization, use cases for the internet of things abound, and businesses are beginning to take advantage of this rapidly growing opportunity. By 2020, IoT spend is forecast to reach $267B, and according to Spier, 50 to 75 percent of data will be generated at the edge.

From self-driving cars to the connected devices that have become all but essential to our daily lives, the expanding presence of IoT is pumping an ever-increasing mass of data into businesses currently lacking the appropriate tools to leverage its full value. “There must be edge computing that is local to be able to process that data,” Spier said.

To give customers the simplicity of a consistent infrastructure from on-prem to public cloud to every edge gateway, Dell and VMware are combining their operational and foundational strengths for an end-to-end new portfolio of solutions, called VMware Edge, that drastically simplifies the development of IoT infrastructure, according to Spier.

“Everything that VMware customers experience in their private cloud, their [software-defined data center] solution, public cloud, we are now going to offer as a service at the edge. Same infrastructure, same operational model as the hyper cloud, but at the edge with the choice of the application development tools that they would like,” Spier said.

The newly released hyperconverged appliance Project Dimension offers a software-defined approach to management, monitoring and security across a heterogeneous set of platform providers, system integrators, devices, and edge gateways. The addition to VMware’s portfolio provides a single virtual platform to replace a process that is currently painstaking and oftentimes manual.

“Project Dimension will have a management layer that allows you to move your infrastructure and choose where you want to run that appliance as a service or infrastructure, whether it be the public cloud, the private cloud or the data center, and the edge,” Spier said.

The company also rolled out the latest version of its software for connected device management, the Pulse IoT Center 2.0, with new features to facilitate more transparent collaborations between information technology and operational technology in platform management.

“What we want to do with Dell is offer these end-to-end solutions so that it’s more simple, you can go to one place to consume it, ensure that it gets deployed, and support that solution, but offering it from a multitude of our partners,” Spier said.

Strategizing at the edge

VMware and Dell EMC are known for their streamlined management of hardware, software and infrastructure, as well as their commitment to working closely with businesses to design solutions and strategies to fit their unique needs. The partners are leveraging both foundational and strategic support in helping customers making the formidable leap to the edge by prioritizing data goals.

“You are going to need deep learning and real-time analytics. It’s always about the the insights you’re trying to get from the data,” Spier said.

Many businesses are taking their first steps toward IoT, and Spier’s team is working with customers to educate them on the importance of this digital foundation at the edge to help them determine appropriate analytic processes that are built to scale. The company just announced a Dell Technologies Inc. partnership with Axis Communications, owned by Canon Inc., that provides secure analytic applications for visualization and surveillance.

“You need to understand the outcome you’re trying to achieve; and then let’s work together on a use case, and we can help solve it with your business,” she said.

With extensive experience bridging platforms and removing communication silos, VMware and Dell are well positioned to iron out the wrinkles in IoT, Spier pointed out. “We have set up our customers to be flexible and be able to choose whatever they want in a cloud, [and] we are very easily able to extend that to the edge,” Spier said.

Building a business to survive the future

The investment in IoT is proving a worthwhile one — reports predict the technology will lead to a 15-percent increase in delivery and supply chain performance productivity. “The edge will be bigger than the cloud,” Michael Dell, chief executive officer and chairman of Dell Technologies, told theCUBE last week during VMworld 2018.

It’s no wonder IoT’s rich potential is motivating a range of businesses to seek opportunities in the space, and every industry stands to benefit from leveraging the technology — if done thoughtfully, according to Spier.

“What are the mission-critical objectives of their business? They shouldn’t do IoT just to do IoT. They need to do what’s right for their business; but I also think it’s important that they look beyond that,” she said.

While the leap to the edge may be a daunting one for many legacy enterprises, a rapidly changing market is pushing organizations to traverse the chasm. With its new edge approach, VMware is changing how businesses participate in this new landscape and ensuring the journey is a methodical, successful one that generates an impact beyond individual businesses, Spier explained.

“How can I create an industry and a company that can sustain in this future world and contribute to the future of what our world’s going to be like? The technology, the way we set this up, and the architecture, is really the foundation to do that. That’s where VMware comes in,” she concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld conference. (* Disclosure: VMware Inc. 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.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE