Multicloud emerged into the mainstream at the recent VMworld conference in Las Vegas, while VMware Inc. solidified critical cloud partnerships, including one with Amazon Web Services Inc. that sees AWS bringing its relational database service to VMware.

“With the multicloud world … we’re seeing a real cross-pollination,” said John Troyer (@jtroyer, pictured, left), chief reckoner at TechReckoning. “You can take VMware and run that in cloud. You can take things from the cloud and now run it back onsite.”

Troyer and fellow analyst Justin Warren, (@jpwarren, pictured, center), chief analyst at PivotNine Pty Ltd., joined Stu Miniman (@stu, pictured, right), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, for an in-depth industry analysis as VMworld drew to a close. The discussion covered the changes in the cloud market and the opportunities and challenges facing VMware as the company contends in a competitive multicloud environment. (* Disclosure below.)

VMware and AWS announce on-prem RDS

The Amazon Relational Database Service on VMware was the biggest announcement of the show, according to Miniman. Providing automated database management, the service simplifies setup and operation of databases regardless of environment.

Partnerships with big-name cloud providers coupled with emerging technology, such as RDS, the Network Virtualization and Security Platform, and Virtual Cloud Hybrid Service, are making virtualization software VMware a leader in the emerging True Private Cloud segment of the cloud market.

“Cloud is a state of mind,” Troyer said. “It’s how you run things; it’s not where exactly you put it.”

Bringing the cloud experience to where the data requires it — on the edge or on-premises — true private cloud experienced close to 55 percent growth in 2017, and the sector is forecast to exceed $250 billion in revenue by 2027, according to Wikibon’s 2018 “True Private Cloud Forecast and Market Share” report.

The challenge for VMware is to bring the enterprise developer into its ecosystem, according to Warren.

“We’re seeing movement with things like PowerShell [task automation], and VMware administrators are getting more comfortable with the idea of scripting and so on, but they’re not programmers,” Warren said. “They still need GUI tools. They still need things that are able to do point and click. It’s not really as automated as it would be in, say, developer land.”

VMworld 2018 brought a move from cloud promises to concrete use case examples, Troyer pointed out.

“This year the use cases were real and the time to value was real,” Troyer said. “They weren’t just marketing hokum up on stage.” He cited companies that have been recent recipients of major investment funding, such as Cohesity Inc. in secondary storage data consolidation, Datrium Inc. in hyperconverged infrastructure and Rubrik Inc. in cloud data management. They’re now delivering on promises made in earlier years, he said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld conference. (* Disclosure: VMware Inc. sponsored coverage of VMworld, and some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. Sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE