VMware Inc. spent the better part of the last week in August outlining a vision of the future for its customers.

That vision will be multicloud or services for cross-cloud applications based on announcements made by the virtualization pioneer during the event. VMware focused on multicloud solutions that extended collaboration with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services Inc. for workload deployment and released new features for application and Kubernetes management in Tanzu.

The company’s ambitious Project Monterey, a processor-based initiative to reimagine hybrid cloud architecture, received a boost with the unveiling of data processing units in the latest release of vSphere 8. And looming over announcements from the conference was the pending acquisition of the company by Broadcom Ltd. for $61 billion.

It was a busy week of news covered extensively by theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, through exclusive interviews with VMware executives, analysts, customers and partners. (* Disclosure below.)

Here are three insights you might have missed:

1. In VMware’s vision, Kubernetes is now the data center API.

Amid the news and announcements from VMware Explore was a key development in the Kubernetes container orchestration space. The latest version of the VMware vSphere 8 platform will now support the Kubernetes application programming interface.

VMware’s embrace of Kubernetes APIs is significant because it addresses a fundamental goal to extend management of Kubernetes environments more broadly beyond DevOps teams. Kubernetes APIs will allow IT administrators to participate more actively in cluster deployments and infrastructure provisioning. In VMware’s world, Kubernetes is now the infrastructure and data center API.

In an interview with theCUBE, VMware Chief Executive Officer Raghu Raghuram noted that this important point represented a key step forward for the company’s cross-cloud model.

“With vSphere 8, Kubernetes becomes the data center API now,” Raghuram said. “We sort of glossed over the point in the keynote, but you could do VM operations, storage. Anything that you can do on vSphere, you can do using a Kubernetes API. Kubernetes has become the standard programming model for infrastructure.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Raghu Raghuram:

2. Cohesity’s new CEO is navigating his own multicloud journey.

Less than a month before VMware Explore, Cohesity Inc. announced that it had named Sanjay Poonen, former chief operating officer of VMware, as its new chief executive officer and president. Poonen, a frequent guest on theCUBE over the years, oversaw a doubling of VMware’s annual revenue to $12 billion during his time with the company. In his new leadership role at Cohesity, he will be focused on architecting cloud partnerships akin to those he developed for VMware with AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

In his interview with theCUBE at VMware Explore, Poonen described how Cohesity, which provides software products for organization to manage data, intends to approach customers seeking a multicloud solution.

“We can’t take in an all-AWS stack with the control plane and data planes at AWS to Walmart,” Poonen said. “So what I’ve explained to both Microsoft and AWS is that the data plane will be multicloud so I can go to Walmart and say, ‘I can back up your data into Azure if you choose to, but the control plane is still going to be in AWS.’”

Poonen’s journey with Cohesity will be worth watching in the months ahead, if for no other reason than to see what materializes from his connection with a close circle of business colleagues. During his interview with theCUBE, Poonen disclosed that he personally spoke with Michael Dell, Amazon chief Andy Jassy, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Thomas Kurian at Google Cloud, and IBM leader Arvind Krishna before taking the top job.

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Sanjay Poonen:

3. VMware has a blockchain, and it’s very interested in Web3.

It may not get as much news coverage as its multicloud initiatives, but VMware is actively pursuing enterprise solutions in a Web3 world. The company launched its own enterprise-grade blockchain platform in 2020. More recently, VMware has unveiled its blockchain for the Ethereum technology stack, with support for Ethereum APIs, development tools, and wallets such as MetaMask.

Kit Colbert, VMware’s chief technology officer, has previously indicated an interest in the applicability of the blockchain distributed ledger model to enterprise use cases, such as finance and the supply chain. Prior to sitting down with theCUBE at VMware Explore, Colbert participated in a panel session that explored the subject of why enterprises hadn’t really begun to scratch the surface of Web3 opportunities.

Colbert’s interest and VMware’s recent move into the Ethereum stack sets the table for what could be an interesting set of Web3-related developments by the company over the course of the next year.

“I’m very bullish, a hundred percent,” Colbert said. “I think blockchain is a hugely enabling technology. We have customers like Broadridge Financial today leveraging VMware Blockchain, doing $100 billion in transactions a day. We may see it with some of the Web3 changes around ownership, individual ownership of data and of assets. That’s going to have a downstream impact on enterprises, how they go to market, their commercial models.”

Here’s theCUBE’s complete video interview with Kit Colbert:

And here’s the complete event playlist:

Plus, you can visit our event coverage page for complete editorial analysis and theCUBE guest insights from VMware Explore.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VMware Explore. Neither VMware, the main sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE