In the past three years, VMware Inc. has been on a spending spree, responding to the existential threat from container technology by embracing Kubernetes and doubling down on its strategic journey to become the “Switzerland” of multicloud.

2021 brought confirmation that VMware would spin off from parent Dell Technologies Inc. and a leadership change as Raghu Raghuram (pictured) took the reins as chief executive officer. As VMworld got underway this week, theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, asks the new CEO where the company is heading next.

“VMware is trying to provide customers with the fastest way of getting to this multicloud era of computing so that they can go fast, they can spend less and, most importantly, they can be free [to] choose the right cloud for right applications and have control over how they deploy and use their applications and data,” Raghuram told Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE.

Speaking during theCUBE on VMworld event, Raghuram and Vellante discussed VMware’s strategy to help enterprises efficiently operate in a multicloud environment. (* Disclosure below.)

VMware portfolio helps enterprise achieve multicloud mastery

In his first 100 days as CEO, Raghuram has been crystallizing VMware’s focus on bringing enterprise into the multicloud era.

“It’s become a multicloud world, and customers are saying, ‘In addition to just being cloud-first, I want to be cloud smart,’” Raghuram stated.

The key to this is having a consistent developer experience across environments. But modern applications run in containerized environments, and Kubernetes is not a developer-friendly platform, which makes the developer experience highly inconsistent, according to Raghuram.

The Tanzu Application Platform, which was announced in beta release on Sept. 1, is an important step to providing developers with a consistent experience when building on top of Kubernetes.

Addressing the misperception that everything at VMware works only on top of its flagship vSphere virtualization platform, Raghuram used the example of VMware’s Cloud Management portfolio.

“Our management portfolio is modular and independent of vSphere,” he said. “This means it can manage the Amazon Web Services Graviton application that you’re building. It can manage the traditional vSphere-based application. It can manage an edge application. It can manage VM-based applications. It can manage container-based applications.”

No matter how seamless the developer experience is, there still aren’t “enough developers in the world to modernize every application that’s in every enterprise,” Raghuram said. VMware’s answer to the developer skills gap is its Kubernetes-based Tanzu platform. The key feature of Tanzu is that it increases developer productivity by allowing them to develop on their choice of cloud, according to Raghuram.

Why leaving the Dell family could benefit VMware

Proving that change is a positive force, the spinoff from Dell will make VMware even stronger, according to Raghuram. He believes the move will bring three key benefits.

The first is a strong, continued relationship with Dell, which is bound by a framework agreement that covers an ongoing global market and technology collaboration. The spinoff will also build VMware’s reputation as the “Switzerland” of multicloud, removing the concerns Dell competitors previously had about creating deep partnerships with VMware. And, thirdly, it will give VMware financial freedom to use its equity and cash assets for future mergers and acquisitions.

“The capital structure flexibility, the Switzerland positioning and the continuing great relationship with Dell — those are the benefits of the spin,” Raghuram said.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE