The pandemic accelerated businesses everywhere on their digital journeys, prompting most of these leaders headfirst into cloud solutions to handle their data, security and commerce needs.

With a multicloud approach to these solutions, organizations can utilize the cloud to its maximum ability and efficiency — Expedient USA LLC calls this the “Cloud Different” approach.

“The difference from a Cloud Different approach is you think of everything you have internally, and there’s a lot of technical debt there, and that’s a lot of weight that you’re carrying when you’re trying to do that transformation,” said Bryan Smith (pictured, right), senior vice president and chief strategy officer of Expedient. “If you flip that around and instead look to make that transformation and move all that technical debt into a cloud that’s already built to run those same types of applications, a VMware-based cloud, now you can remove all of that noise and move into a curated stack of technology and everything just works.”

Smith and Brent Meadows (pictured, left), vice president of advanced solution architecture at Expedient, spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Lisa Martin and David Nicholson at VMware Explore, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the Cloud Different approach, being “cloud smart,” desktop-as-a-service and more. (* Disclosure below.)

What’s behind the Cloud Different approach?

Meadows brought the topic of staffing to the discussion, describing how as infrastructure is built, there’s a lot of “tribal knowledge” being created during this process, with more and more of that knowledge walking out the door as the workforce grows. Expedient removes technical debt, eliminating tribal knowledge and smoothing out their digital transformation with their expertise, according to Meadows.

Being “cloud smart” is essential for enterprises today if they want to move into the cloud, and consistency is key, Smith pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s things that you’re running on-premises that are legacy to things that are in a view VMware-based cloud, such as an Expedient cloud, or things that are in a hyper-scale,” Smith said. “But having one consistent security, one consistent automation, one consistent cost management gives you the governance so that you can get the value out of the cloud that you are hoping for and remove a lot of the noise and think less about the technology and more about what the business is getting out of the technology.”

One use case discussed involved Bob Evan Farms, one of Expedient’s clients, and its digital transformation experience. Expedient looked at the company’s existing environment and worked them through the transformation process, which involved eliminating their data center, giving Bob Evans more flexibility in its next choice of office.

Expedient has a 99% retention rate for over a decade, reflecting the effectiveness of their expertise and “Cloud Different” approach, according to Smith.

“It’s that expertise that wraps around all the different technology so that you’re not worried about what’s happening and not worried about trying to keep the lights on and doing the firefighting,” he said. “You’re focused on the business.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMware Explore:

(* Disclosure: Expedient USA LLC sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Expedient nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE