In the ever-shifting world of modern business, it’s impossible to find a one-size-fits-all digital strategy. As companies shift computing architectures between on-premises, off-prem, or a multicloud mix, sometimes it seems they are dancing the cloud strategy “hokey pokey.” It’s one leg in, then one leg out as the data center undergoes continual shaking up.

“In the evolution of cloud, and we’ve been on the journey for 10 years, we’ve had … where people were shutting down data centers and going to all these public cloud providers, [and it] was always a one-way street,” said Muneyb Minhazuddin (pictured, left), vice president of product marketing, cloud, security and workspace solutions, at VMware Inc. “[Then] customers started asking us some questions, saying, ‘If it’s so easy to go that way, is it also that easy to bring it back?’

“The transformation is in the way that you consume the infrastructure,” stated Pierluca Chiodelli (pictured, right), vice president of product management at Dell EMC. “It is about what app I need to run, how I build my app. So, it’s the environment. There is not one right way or wrong way; it’s an end.”

Minhazuddin and Chiodelli spoke with John Walls (@JohnWalls21), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VMworld event in San Francisco. Joining the conversation, which covered Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs for VCF, was theCUBE guest host John Troyer (@jtroyer), chief reckoner at TechReckoning (see the full interview with transcript here.) (* Disclosure below.)

Dell Technologies Cloud gets topped with VCF

VMware’s Cloud Foundation platform was developed in response to the rise of hybrid cloud. Building on top of that is this year’s announcement of Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs.

“The Dell Technologies Cloud [is] a component of the best-of-breed technology from our storage, networking and also compute, but we did the VMware VCF on top,” Chiodelli said.

The practicalities of infrastructure can take a backseat as cool application technologies, such as automation and artificial intelligence, grab the spotlight. But high-performance hardware is essential for modern business-critical apps. Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs integrates Dell EMC storage, compute and networking solutions with VCF to support customers building custom multicloud environments.

“People forgot about [infrastructure] the first few phases of going to the cloud,” Minhazuddin stated. “Now as they think about a true hybrid cloud nature, they want optimal performance in the software layer [and] in the hardware layer.”

But the cloud validated design is just the first step, according to Chiodelli said. “We are working very closely to also solve the entire things that VCF allow you to do; first day deployment, allow you to expand the infrastructure, and allow you also to do life-cycle management.”

“It’s very exciting moment. I think it’s just the starting of this dream,” Chiodelli concluded.

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