Although the cloud has been a phenomenal success, it still hasn’t reached its potential. Progress has been made on the path to digital, yet practically every business leader agrees they are not moving fast enough.
“We have a long way to go, and we have to go faster,” said VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram, speaking at VMware Explore, in Barcelona, this week.
“Today, it is the application that drives the strategy and the location. Cloud smart is replacing cloud first, as the modern approach to digital transformation.”
He noted this can be viewed as ‘the great re-platforming’ of the enterprise, and an opportunity to rethink and reshape the core operations that propel every entity.
Facing challenges
However, there are several roadblocks that are hampering this move. Firstly, the global-scale gap in critical skills, from software development to cloud operations. Next, there’s the sheer ‘weight’ of existing enterprise apps, which have proven tricky to modernise and move to the cloud.
The final roadblock is the fragmented nature of running and securing apps across a wide range of clouds, which has led to ‘cloud chaos’.
Other challenges include cost, cyber security and energy. “More than cyber security, it is about trying to build digital resilience. Costs are always a challenge for businesses, and in Europe in particular, businesses are faced with the challenge of energy consumption.”
The biggest challenge perhaps, he added, is transforming the business on one hand, while keeping it running on the other.
Yet despite all these challenges, he pointed out that CIOs are steadfast in their priority to become digital smart. “There are 350K new application projects started every week, for example.”
He said companies need to consider what their application portfolios look like, are they enterprise, or on-premises, or in the cloud? And regardless of how they are written, how can they be put together, managed and secured effectively?
Becoming cloud smart
Raghuram noted businesses in every sector have discovered that to address these challenges and successfully re-platform themselves means building a cloud-smart architecture, one that enables their teams to navigate the ingrained complexity of today’s multi-cloud world.
In addition, at the core of this approach is the ability to drive a consistent, secure and cost-efficient operating model across the various clouds that businesses depend on.
Whereas cloud chaos is about disparate DevOps, and security, cloud smart is about accelerated app development. With cloud smart, siloed cloud infrastructure becomes consistent enterprise infrastructure, and fragmented app-access experience moves to a frictionless experience.
In ending, he commented that VMware has been through many transitions, yet remains focused on solutions to help customers address their challenges. One big change was the announcement in May, of the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom.
“Once the acquisition is completed, VMware will become the software arm of Broadcom.”
Moreover, the new VMware, as part of Broadcom, will be able to offer enterprise customers greater choice and flexibility to address these complex IT challenges.
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