As digital transformation accelerates across organizations globally, business leaders are forced to make crucial decisions on their cloud journey.

VMware Inc. partnered with Amazon Web Services Inc. to bring VMware to the cloud and help organizations make these decisions and reach their destination with confidence, offering less risk than other solutions, according to James Forrester (pictured), vice president and worldwide technical leader of cloud sales at VMware Inc.

“One of the misconceptions that I address right out of the gate is that somehow going VMware Cloud takes you away from AWS services,” Forrester said. “It doesn’t — it gets you closer to them. Full, direct, native access to all of those hundreds of great AWS services.”

Forrester spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier at the AWS Summit New York event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed bringing confidence to organizations on their cloud journey, what hybrid means for VMware, native services on the cloud, and more. (* Disclosure below.)

Best of both worlds

Hybrid cloud is a steady state, being adapted by organizations all over the world to take advantages of both on-premises and the cloud combined. VMware’s customers want the best of both worlds, and VMware and AWS are ready to fill that need, according to Forrester.

“With innovations like VMware Cloud and AWS Outposts, we’re able to bring that back into the data center,” he said. “We’re able to bring those same benefits of the public cloud into the customers’ on-prem environment. We see hybrid rolling and rolling and being able to offer our solution across all of it.”

The pandemic accelerated a global digital transition, causing several changes within the past couple of years in several markets across the world, causing a sense of urgency for those at the beginning or the middle of a cloud journey.

“There’s a sense of urgency over the last couple of years in that most customers I talked to are no longer relaxed about the timing of delivering cloud capabilities to their organizations,” Forrester said. “Most customers are on sort of a transformation journey of their own, and digital transformation and cloud transformation are fundamental to that.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Summit New York event:

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE