To bring innovative services, products and, more importantly, experiences to customers, businesses are increasingly betting on the edge.

And as data and applications continue to distribute across unlimited devices and locations, more tools to run and manage these apps are needed. That is why VMware Inc. recently unveiled its VMware Edge portfolio.

“VMware strategy is to come up with that common software stack that is going to be placed at all of these edge locations, sometimes millions of them, for different types of workloads,” said Sanjay Uppal (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of the Service Provider and Edge Business Unit at VMware. “But the commonality of the stack is important, because that is what the service providers and the enterprises use to derive the benefits.”

Uppal spoke with Lisa Martin, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the recent theCUBE on VMworld event. They discussed VMware Edge and how it will deliver better customer experiences, as well as VMware’s initiatives to make it easier for companies to work on the edge. (* Disclosure below.)

Managing and securing apps

VMware Edge brings together products from across VMware that will enable organizations to run, manage and better secure edge-native apps across multiple clouds at both near edge and far edge locations, according to Uppal. The solutions are purposefully designed for edge-native apps and their unique performance and latency requirements.

Another vital piece of the puzzle is that VMware Telco Cloud Platform will now run at the edge.

“We’ve had our ESXi product, which is very successful in running in the data center, [and] we have an edge-ready version for this product. We’ve made a 10-times improvement in the overhead and latency of ESXi,” Uppal explained. “So now it can be deployed in edge locations, in very small form factors, and it is absolutely equivalent to bare metal overhead.”

When designing its solutions for the edge, VMware assumes that new applications in this environment are being developed with a focus on the end-user experience, according to Uppal. For companies, it’s no longer just about having a product or service that benefits customers or delivering what they want; it’s about having something that’s capable of promoting a great experience.

“When you look at healthcare, what’s going on right now is that when you have a symptom, you go to your doctor to get checked out. But what if your body tells you that there’s something that you need to get done?” he said. “This entire new class of applications are coming in with sensors that have artificial intelligence in them that are metricating what is happening. That’s an experience.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more 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 Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE