As Dell Technologies Inc. and VMware Inc. continue to deepen their partnership — including VMware Cloud on Dell EMC, which has just become available — the question around data protection for open source containers management platform Kubernetes alongside a robust ecosystem remains at the forefront.

Beth Phalen (pictured, right), president and general manager of the data protection division at Dell EMC, and Rajiv Ramaswami (pictured, left), chief operating officer of products and cloud services at VMware, spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this week’s VMworld event in San Francisco.

They discussed ways the two companies are tackling data security and accessibility to a broad range of third-party providers (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following has been condensed for clarity.]

Walls: Obviously, you have this strong partnership that got a little stronger. Let’s get into that a little bit. 

Phalen: There are three things that we’re talking about this week with our good partners at VMware: How we make sure that we have data protection … for the VMware Cloud on Dell EMC. Previewing what we’re doing to protect Kubernetes environments, which is super exciting. And then the project … around how we’re doing work together to bring [Dell EMC PowerProtect Software] into … the best integration for vSphere and our VMware customers.

Miniman: VMware’s always had a robust ecosystem, but it’s been going through a major shift. What do you talk to your partners about when you say, ‘OK, the Dell side of things is getting further embedded into VMware.’ How do you ensure an open and robust ecosystem without unbalancing that?

Ramaswami: VMware has always prided itself on being a platform company, and you’re only a platform company if you actually have a broad ecosystem of people who are building and developing on your platform. So we are not walking away from that one little bit. We continue to support a very broad-based set of providers across many different functions — whether it be data protection, whether it be security, whether it be compliance … a whole bunch of things around the platform. What we will do, though, is we will pick a set of partners, and we will do deeper integrations with them.

We’re going to do deep integration with Beth’s team. We are actually using some of their technologies to enhance our services but also enabling them to do better integration with vSphere and the whole VMware environment, while at the same time allowing a rich ecosystem of third-party providers to work with us on top of our platforms.

Miniman: Could you help us dig into that Kubernetes space? From the data protection standpoint, what’s been done to move into that environment? What’s different that people might not have known from your group from just a couple of years ago?

Phalen: As you start talking about the container space, what you’re saying with data protection, it’s a different set of assets that you need to protect. You have to make sure that you’re protecting the metadata. You have to bring up the whole environment. And so it’s sort of a variation on a theme.

And what we’re particularly proud of is that we’re approaching it in a way that’s really ground up … designing data protection, not retrofitting the past — but what are the needs for a Kubernetes environment, and make sure that they can restore that.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld event. (* Disclosure: Dell Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE