VMware Inc.’s continued rise in popularity is testimony to customers’ desire for a flexible, virtualized system that can facilitate a common data structure, from the edge to the data center, from private clouds to public clouds. But customers also need their systems to be secure, and this is gaining more attention as information technology vendors begin to see data streams from sensor-connected Internet of Things devices become a major part of enterprise computing, especially at the edge.

“We see a lot of opportunities as it relates to edge computing. IoT is the biggest security challenge that we face” said Dom Delfino (pictured, right), senior vice president of worldwide sales and systems engineers at VMware.

Delfino spoke about edge computing and other subjects during his visit to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio. He talked with host Stu Miniman (@stu) and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, and was joined by Lee Caswell (pictured, left), vice president of products at VMware. They discussed the how VMware is taking steps in security and the importance of leveraging scale in the infrastructure. (* Disclosure below.)

Latest vSAN release has encryption

VMware is seeking to support security tools for protecting data wherever it may reside. The latest vSAN release 6.6 includes native hyperconverged infrastructure, or HCI, software encryption. The company’s placement of its products in the Amazon Web Services Inc. public cloud was accompanied by news from a number of companies, including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, HyTrust and Trend Micro, that they would provide security tools via VMware for AWS users.

VMware’s moves to highlight data and system security mirror the messages it is hearing from its users. Customers are concerned about protection, especially when it comes to the influx of data to the edge, and realize that a new approach is needed.

“What customers are starting to recognize is they have to make some foundational, architectural changes in order to fix this problem,” Delfino said. “If you don’t, it’s not going to go away; it’s only going to get worse.”

In addition to security, the hybrid cloud environment is demanding tools that can scale effectively for any IT operation. NSX, VMware’s network virtualization and security platform, is helping users take advantage of cross-cloud functionalities, now including those of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud for VMware customers.

“Users are trying to find leverage and scale. That’s where we’re seeing the massive adoption of vSAN,” Caswell said.

There is also a “democratization” effect in virtualization taking place with vSAN, as it is proving capable of not just scaling for large enterprises, but can be effectively implemented down market as well. “You can drop in a three node, fully configured, vSAN plus vSphere for under $25,000,” Caswell said. “Now I’ve got a virtualized environment.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VMworld 2017. Neither VMware Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE