Gardner: We have heard a lot about IT as a service. How have you at Southwest been able to  keep IT squarely in the role of enablement?

Young: As we are taking a look and trying to be what travelers want in an    airline, and we are constantly looking for ways to improve Southwest    Airlines and make it better for our customers, that's really where virtualization and IT as a service comes into play.

People want to be able to get on Southwest.com,   make a reservation, log on to their Rapid Rewards or our Loyalty   Program, and they  want to be able to do it when they want to do it, when   they need to  do it, from wherever they are. And it’s just great to be   able to  provide that service.

We provide that to them at any   point in  time that they want in a reliable manner. And that's really   what it  gets right down to -- to make the functions and the solutions   that we  provide ubiquitous so people don’t really need to think about   anything  other than, "I need to do this and I can do it now."

At your fingertips

Gardner: I travel quite a bit and it seems to me that things have changed a lot  in the last few years.   One of the nice things is that information  seems to be at your   fingertips more than ever. I never seem to be out  of the loop now as a   traveler. I can find out changes probably as  quickly as the folks at the   gate.

So how has this transfer of  information been possible?  How  have you been able to keep up with the  demands and the expectations  of  the travelers?

Young: If we talk about information and the  flow of  information through  applications and services, it really starts  to  segment the core  technical aspects of that so the customer and our   employees don’t  really need to think about it. When they want to get  the  flight at the  gates, the passenger is on a flight leg, etc., they  can  go ahead and  get that at any moment in time.

... The same is true   of how we provide IT as a  service. What we want to be able to do is   provide IT whenever they  want it, whenever they need it, at the right   cost point, and to meet  their needs. We've got some of the best   customers in the world and  they like to do things for themselves. We   want to allow them to do  that for themselves and be able to provide our   employees the same.

Gardner: How in  IT have you been able to create common infrastructures,  reduce   redundancy, and then yet still ramp up to meet all your  requirements?

Significant volume

Young: What   we've been able to do and how we have been able to meet some  of those   challenges is through a number of different VMware products.  One of the   core products is VMware itself, if we talk about vSphere, vMotion, etc., to be able to provide that virtualization. You can get a 1-to-10 virtualization depending on which type of servers and blades you're using, which helps us on the infrastructure side of the house   to  maintain that and have the storage, physical, and electrical   capacity  in our data centers.

But it also allows us, as we're moving, consolidating, and expanding these different data centers, to be able to move that virtual machine (VM) seamlessly between points. Then, it doesn’t matter where it’s running.

That    allows us the capacity. So if we have a fare sale and I need to add    capacity on some of our services, it gives our us and our team that run    the infrastructure the ability to bring up new services on new VMs    seamlessly. It plugs right into how we're doing things, so that internal    cloud allows us not to experience blips.

It's been a great add for us from a capacity management perspective and being able to get the right capacity, with the right    applications, at the right time. It allows us to manage that in such a    way that it’s transparent to our end-users so they don’t notice any  of   this is going on in the background, and the experience is not  different.

...  We started our virtualized   environments about 18 months ago. We went  from a very small amount of   virtualization to what we coined our  Server 2.0 strategy, which was   really the combination of  commodity-based hardware blades with VMware on   that.

And that  allowed us last year in the first and second   quarter to grow from  several hundred VMs to over several thousand, which   is where we're at  today in the production environment. If you talk   about production,  development, and test, production is just one of those   environments.

It  has allowed us to scale that very rapidly   without having to add a  thousand physical servers. And it has been a   tremendous benefit for us  in managing our power, space, and cooling in   the data center,    along with allowing our engineers who are doing the day-to-day work  to   have a single way to manage it, deploy, and move stuff around even   more  automatically. They don’t have to mess with that anymore, VMware   just  takes care of the different products that are part of the VMware   Suite.

Gardner: And your  confidence, has it risen to the  level where you're looking at  70, 80,  90, even more percent of  virtualization? How do you expect to  end that  journey?

Ready for the evolution

Young: I would love to be at 100 percent virtualized. That would be   fantastic.  I think unfortunately we still have some manufacturers and   software  vendors -- and we call them vendors, because typically we   don’t say  partners -- who decide they are not going to support their   software  running in the virtualized environment. That can create   problems,  especially when you need to keep some of those systems up 24 x   7, 365,  with 99.95 percent availability.

We're hoping that    changes, but the goal would be to move as much as we can, because if I    take a look at virtualization, we are kind of our internal private    cloud. What that’s really doing is getting us ready for the evolution    that’s going to happen over the next, 5, 7, or 10 years, where you may    have applications and data deployed out in a cloud, a virtual private cloud, public cloud if the security becomes good enough, where you've got to bring all that stuff together.

If you need to have huge amounts of capacity and two applications are not co-located that need to talk back and forth, you've got to be much more  efficient   on the calls and the communications and make that seamless  for the   customer.

This is giving us the platform to start  learning more   and start developing those solutions that don’t need to  be collocated in   a data center or in one or two data centers, but can  really be pushed   wherever it makes sense. That could be from wherever  the most efficient   data center is from a green technology perspective,  use the least   electricity and cooling power, to alternate energy, to  what makes sense   at the time of the year.

That is a huge add  and a huge win for  us  in the IT community to be able to start  utilizing some of that   virtualization and even across physical  locations.

Gardner: Is there a   centralization feature to this that also is paying dividends?

Young: That’s a huge cornerstone of the suite of tools that we've been able   to  get through VMware is being able to deploy custom solutions and  even   some of the off-the-shelf solutions on a standard platform,  standard   operating systems, standard configurations, standard  containers for the   web, etc. It allows us to deploy that stuff within  minutes, whereas it   used to take engineers manually going to configure  each thing   separately. That’s been a huge savings.

The other  thing is, once   you get the configuration right and you have it  automated, you don’t   have to worry about people taking some human  missteps. Those are going   to happen, and you've got to go back and  redo something. That   elimination of error and the speed at which we  can do that is helping.   As you expand your server footprints and the  number of VMs and servers   you have without having to add to your  staff, you can actually do more   with the same number of or fewer  staff.

Gardner: How you feel about desktop virtualization?

Young: What’s really driven us to take a look  at  it is that around our  environment we can control security on virtual   desktops, etc., very  clearly, very quickly and deliver that in a great   service.

New mobile devices

The    other thing that’s leading to this is, not just what we talked about   in  security, is the plethora of brand new mobile devices -- iPhones, iPads, Android devices, Galaxy. HP has a new device. RIM has a new device. We need to be able to deliver our services in a  more   ubiquitous manner. The virtual desktop allows us to go ahead and   deliver  some of those where I don’t need to control the hardware. I   just  control the interface, which can protect our systems virtually,   and it’s  really pretty neat.

I was on one of my devices the   other day and  was able to go in via virtual desktop that was set up to   be able to use  some of the core systems without having all that stuff   loaded on my  machine, and that was via the Internet. So it worked out   phenomenally  well.

Now, there are some issues that you have to   do depending on  whether you're doing collocation and facility, but you   can easily get  through some of that with the right virtualization  setup  and networking.

• From VMworld, Cosmetics Giant Revlon Harnesses the Power of Private Cloud to Produce Impressive Savings and Cost Avoidance
• From VMworld, NYSE Euronext on Hybrid Cloud Vision and Strategy Behind the Capital Markets Community Platform Vertical Cloud
• VMware's vSphere 5 Hits the Streets
• VMware Launches a Developer Edition for Cloud Service
• Priming the Private Cloud Pump, HP Releases VirtualSystem for VMware at VMworld

Gardner: I'm interested why data management has been a primary driver for you as you've looked to adopt both the private cloud and VDI. What is it about the data equation that’s made this look like a good solution for you?

Fuss: We need our data to be accessible everywhere, at every time, no  matter   what provider is at what facility. Even from an engineering and    technology standpoint, no matter what system analyst, what network    engineer may sit down wherever they are to troubleshoot an issue, we need that common set of tools.

Common repository

We need the common repository of information for a caregiver. That would be the electronic medical information. It could be the x-rays, the slides, the CT scans,    or the results that were dictated by a radiologist. Whatever it might    be, that information needs to be available in a flexible manner and    delivered directly to the deskside experience.

Now, if that’s a desktop, it needs to be on a regular PC, but if we're talking about a tablet, we need to accommodate the tablets that people bring in and have come into the facility and are now actively being used, or zero client technology.

We    have all the different technologies and pieces. We're trying to   promote  these pieces to be used and trying to be flexible with   accommodating  them and getting people to the information that they need   so they can  take care of the first priority, which really is patient   care.

Gardner: Tell me about the extent of your  distributed campus and environment.   Not only are you dealing with many  different types of data and many   different endpoints, but you're also  distributing this across a   multitude of different environments.

Fuss: We have two main acute hospitals.   We have a nursing home, a cancer  center, outpatient care offices, and   several different offices all  around the community. So the data truly   needs to not be resident in  one spot.

Where    you're accessing that data from or where you're using it is  seamless    to the end user and provides a solid customer experience.

We also needed to have a secured disaster recovery (DR) facility, so that if anything were to happen to our primary data center that’s on one of the campuses, we could flex seamlessly over.

So    building a cloud for us made total sense. That cloud hovers between   one  of two data centers. One is at one of the acute facilities, and   then  100 miles away in another state, we have another data center. Our   cloud  roams between the two, and we have data flowing from each area.

So    the connection really is no longer about where it’s physically  located   by any restriction. It’s more of just gaining access to the  internet  and  being able to make connections. Where you're accessing  that data  from  or where you're using it is seamless to the end user  and provides a   solid customer experience.

... There are a lot of people who can embrace different types of clouds. You've got hybrid clouds,    private clouds, public clouds, all with different offerings. For us  it   made sense to do a private cloud. For others, it may make sense to  do   hybrid type cloud.

As we move toward the future, I can see  that   we might be able to offload some of our services toward the  public   cloud. As we increase the size of some of our data and we have  patient   care cut over to the side, there might be some other data that  does not   follow the same guidelines. We can put that into a secure  public cloud   and attach everything.

I'm    not worried about theft of an individual device, because the device     has nothing more on it than some connectors to get somewhere.

VMware is coming out with those tools and using those tools to make that  kind   of continuation project possible to look at. We're very excited  about   some of the initiatives that we've seen at VMworld -- the vCloud Director,    with security, the different layers built into that that could make    some of the public cloud usable for us for specific applications.

Gardner: Correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds as if private cloud to   you means better security.

Fuss: Oh, it does, most definitely. I'm no longer worried about the  endpoint   device walking away from us. I'm not worried about theft of  an   individual device, because the device has nothing more on it than  some   connectors to get somewhere.

When we were first embracing  zero   client technology in a lot of places, we did some studies. We  talked to   some different people who had already embraced it. One  particular   hospital I spoke to said they had on video someone stealing  a zero   client device, perhaps thinking that they had stolen some  great new   utility tool for home, a new PC. They were all excited.

They  also   have them on video, bringing it back the next morning, because  they   couldn’t do anything with it when they got to their house. Using  cloud,   using the technologies that ride in the cloud, like VMware View and access to the data through VMware View, really helps to lock things down and it helps to prevent things.

No data leakage

In the past, somebody could have taken a PC, and let’s say that PC could have had metadata on it or could have had some files on it that were saved in someway.   It  was comical to hear that story from another person who was in a   similar  situation as us, where there was no data loss or data leakage,   even if  that device had never come back. So the cloud really has   tightened  things down for us.

One of the primary concerns for our electronic medical records is that it’s patient data, financial data, and so needs to be PCI-, and HIPAA-compliant.    All the different compliance standards that we need to abide by are   all  satisfied with the ways that these machines are locked down, by the   way  the cloud is moving, and where we allow it to move to.

Gardner: How do you view private cloud and VDI  -- separate, distinct,  together? What’s the relationship?

Fuss: They're definitely together. They have to be together. In my opinion,    it’s what makes sense. We want to see the data tight. We want to see   the  integration tight. We can have a cloud where the data roams back   and  forth, but the connection into the cloud actually uses that data.

As    I sit here on a device, a personal device at the office that is    connected to my virtual desktop instance, this device doesn't even have    to be on my network. I'm utilizing a public network that we have here   at  the hospital system and I've connected into my virtual desktop. I   have  full accessibility. I'll flip over here in a few minutes when I go   into  another meeting. I'll bring my iPad with me, another personal device, and I'll be connected right to that same virtual desktop.

So    the cloud has allowed me, with View, to seamlessly move between all    these different devices. I no longer am tied to something. I'm no  longer   tied to a specific physical location, a physical anything. I  really am   completely mobile. I can work anywhere at any time and have  that same   common set of tools.

I    should no longer call it disaster recovery. I should call it our     second data center because even though it really is 100 miles away, I     can still sit there and work all day long just like I'm anywhere else.

It    doesn't matter if I'm working out of the DR site. I should no longer    call it disaster recovery. I should call it our second data center    because even though it really is 100 miles away, I can still sit there    and work all day long just like I'm anywhere else. That ability is    really the value that using a cloud and using View gives you.

I    want a physician in his office, out on the road or wherever they might    be, at home, in a practice have access to that same data and have a    similar look and feel every time they connect from whatever device.    That's what these solutions that we've opted for have provided for us.

...    We can already see the expansion, the use of that technology in    different areas. We have some physicians with iPads working throughout    the facility, visiting the patient’s bedsides, looking at their charts,    all that kind of flex room is great.

I've seen it in our    administrative areas, our human resource officer using iPad remotely.    We’ve had our Chief Information Officer using an iPad, using a PC at    home, and connecting through the View client to her machine.

We’ve    gotten support not just from forcing the technology out there, but by    people asking for the technology. That’s how you can tell you have a    good product. People asking, "Can I be moved to this new product,    because the flexibility of my supervisor, director, whoever is using is    what I need."

Hit a home run

If    the director calls saying, "I need this employee to have this    flexibility," you know you've hit a home run with the technology. I    haven’t had anybody call asking for another PC at another location for    the same person to work. I have people calling saying, "I really need  to   get them onto this technology as soon as it’s possible, because  it's   made this employee so efficient. I need to do that for everybody  else."

... Also, everything that we're doing   allows us not to  focus on location, and that's the big thing. We break   away from  location. So where is the data center? Is it going to be   affected by the next hurricane coming up the East Coast? Well, if we  have a fear of where the   hurricane is, we can move our data center 100  miles inland. Or if we   think that inland is going to be more affected,  we can keep it in Rhode   Island, which is right on the ocean.

So  we have that ability,   and nobody knows where that data is other than the  IT department. We   know it's within the system, within the security, but  nobody would ever   notice the difference or question where the data is  running or   residing. They might ask, and we could tell them, but nobody  says,   "Wow, that's slow" or "I can see a difference." None of those kind  of   calls comes in as the cloud flexes.

Gardner: At  VMworld, you've had a chance to look over View 5, and the  PC-over-IP benefits there; is that something that’s in your pipeline?

Fuss: Absolutely. We’re blessed to be in the VMware 5 beta test user group,    and we’re loving what we see. We like the performance. The PC-over-IP    expansion is amazing. They’ve written a great protocol there with  their   partners, and that is the technology that’s going to continue to  drive   the reinvention of the desktop.

We’ve gone through the    reinvention of the desktop a few times in my career, from somewhat dumb    terminals to smart terminals to client server. We seem to be making  our   way back to where we’re keeping our data safe in data centers and  in   silos. We’re giving people a great end-user experience to give them  a   full PC feature-set. We’re doing it all securely and we’re doing it  all   with products that integrate seamlessly with one another, and  that’s   really the goal.

We seem to be making our way back to where we’re keeping our data safe in data centers and in silos.

We    want the user to sit down and feel comfortable with whatever   technology  they use, and to have a way to take care of our patients   that need our  help and take care of what other important administrative   business they  may do, so we can keep moving forward.

...  So   the benefits are there, and they’re just growing now, as it's    integrated and being used more in the clinical areas. We’ve seen some    growth recently. Even our pharmacy staff is starting to carry iPads    around, when they’re doing inventories of some of the medication    machines and being able to get that information right there, but on a    device that’s secure. If they were to leave it behind, nobody could    connect to anything, and that data all sitting safe inside the data    center.

So the adoption is there, the benefits are already there,    and it's just growing and growing. Every time I turn around, we’re    bumping another 50, another 75, virtual machines, into another pool of machines for a new purpose, and that’s the expansion that I keep wanting to encourage.

• Tampa Bay Rays Hit Home Run with Virtualization that Enables Tablet Applications Delivery in the Field
• VMware's Carl Eschenbach on the Scope and Depth of Cloud Computing and How CIOs Will Have to Adapt
• VMworld Showcase: How ADP Dealer Services benefits from VMware View in its expanding use of desktop virtualization
• VMworld Case Study: City of Pittsburgh's IT success and the beneficial synergy between virtualized servers and desktops
  
• From VMworld, Cosmetics Giant Revlon Harnesses the Power of Private Cloud to Produce Impressive Savings and Cost Avoidance
• From VMworld, NYSE Euronext on Hybrid Cloud Vision and Strategy Behind the Capital Markets Community Platform Vertical Cloud

Gardner: Some people seem to think  that the move to cloud  makes IT less   relevant. Do you agree, and how  are the CIOs you are talking to viewing   it?

Eschenbach: When people ask if    cloud is real or if it's happening, I can tell you unequivocally that  the   answer is yes. In fact, one of the things that VMware is so  excited   about is our position around cloud computing.

The    reason I say that is that the cloud era is here, and VMware has the    solutions to help our customers actually bridge the gap between their    existing data centers and legacy applications to this new world of cloud computing. It's us and the strength of our    ecosystem partners who are leading this technology innovation and    services that enable people to accelerate their cloud adoption.

It's been a very exciting show here at VMworld.  We   had 20,000 plus people in attendance, and I can tell you that the    energy at this show only proves that our industry is going through a    major transformation toward cloud computing.

So   while it's  true there are some CIOs who are resistant or hesitant to   move to the  cloud, it's not whether they're going to in the future. It's   really  how fast. Clearly people are thinking about it. They need help   along  the way, because they need to bridge their existing investments,   as I  said earlier, to move to the cloud.

Hybrid cloud

Once they find a way to do that in a very secure manner, people will start to build not public cloud offerings and solutions, not private cloud offerings and solutions, but they will truly build what we call a hybrid cloud.

Gardner: You seem to be saying that IT becomes more fundamental, that with cloud the role   of IT becomes more strategic.

Eschenbach: IT needs to become a strategic asset or weapon to help drive revenue    generation for the company. It no longer needs to be a cost center or    just something that becomes a barrier to success for the company.

Today, in a lot of cases, people look at IT as the barrier, meaning they're not agile enough to service and support the line of business.    In effect, what happens when you start to build either a private or    public cloud, is that they actually become opaque. They become    transparent to the line of business.

There's no longer an issue    or challenge with how fast a company can roll out a new business    opportunity or solution. It's actually removed now, when it gets to IT    or the existing CIO organization, because they take that away. They're    able to service them much faster, because when you deploy cloud-based    solutions, you have a much more agile infrastructure to support the  line   of business.

When    you start to build either a private or public cloud, is that they     actually become opaque. They become transparent to the line of business.

Gardner: We've been hearing about cloud infrastructure management, cloud application platforms,    end user computing, and additional use of virtualization on the  client   tier. This is coming together as a seamless strategy, and I'm  curious   about the paybacks.

Those companies that are biting  this off   fully, that are going full-bore at cloud at these different  levels, seem   to be getting a lot back in return. Do you see this as a  whole greater   than the sum of the parts? Is there an advantage to  being a full   cloud-enabled organization?

Eschenbach: There clearly is, Dana. We have customers that are going through multiple phases of a journey toward a cloud platform.

First,    everyone has to start with just thinking about how they'll virtualize    their existing assets and their data center, which is exactly what    VMware has done over the last many years. We've helped our customers    drive out a lot of CAPEX savings in IT by just moving to a highly virtualized environment.

But what cloud brings is more than just CAPEX savings. It brings OPEX savings and operational savings, because when you move from a highly    virtualized infrastructure to a true private, public, or hybrid cloud,    you are now focused on leveraging management and automation tools,  which   really then focuses on the OPEX savings you get.

Business benefit

So    again, moving from a highly virtualized environment moves you from a    technical discussion and a CAPEX savings discussion to one that’s more    of a business benefit by leveraging cloud, because of the management  and   automation you put around that highly virtualized environment,    therefore leading to much more agile infrastructure to service the    business.

Gardner: I've been talking to a number of   customers this week and I'm certainly hearing from them that the more   they  adopt and adapt to cloud, the better the returns. They're seeing    better disaster recovery efficiencies. They're getting better data efficiencies. They're doing    better with their networks. It seems as if it becomes pervasive.

But    I'm wondering too, Carl, for those companies that resist this, are  they   facing a penalty? It seems to me that they could be at a  competitive   disadvantage pretty quickly.

Eschenbach: Among our   customers, the people who typically resist moving to  cloud-based   architectures or solutions are actually the CIOs and their    infrastructure team itself.

The reason for that is that the  line   of business has this notion,or has this understanding, that they  can   move to public cloud models and it's much cheaper, faster, and in  some   cases, they think more reliable. In effect, they forget that the  CIO has   processes in place, has existing expenses on building out its    infrastructure, has security, compliance, and controls of the IT  that’s   already running on that infrastructure.

The    CIOs are really the ones who may resist cloud today, but in the end     they're the ones who have to move to a cloud faster, so the line of     business does not go around them and fall into alternatives to support     the business.

If we can help the CIO build out a cloud    infrastructure within their own four walls of their data center, the    line of business would much rather leverage them, if they can get all    the security,    compliance, and controls that they are accustomed to getting, but get it    at a faster, cheaper rate, which is the promise of the public cloud.

So    the CIOs are really the ones who may resist cloud today, but in the   end  they're the ones who have to move to a cloud faster, so the line of    business does not go around them and fall into alternatives to  support   the business.

Gardner: That gets back to that relevancy.   It seems to me that they risk  becoming irrelevant if they resist, but   they could actually increase  their role and importance in the   organization by embracing cloud.

Eschenbach: No question. There was an example on stage here. I had an opportunity to interview the CIO at Revlon.    One of the things that he talked about was the fact that he increased    the IT project throughput through his organization by 300 percent,  when   he built out a highly automated, private-cloud infrastructure.

What's    happened, he said, is that the line of business and his business    partners no longer think of IT as the barrier or the roadblock to    rolling out new revenue-generating services. Instead they look to them,    because they know they can service them in a much faster way.

Large ecosystem

Gardner: I look around me here at the show and I see some of the largest    corporations in the world. I also see some of the largest IT vendors in    the world. There's a big ecosystem that’s developed here.

But I'm also seeing smaller companies. So cloud’s message, cloud’s value to small to medium-sized business (SMBs),    is it just as good as what we are telling them in terms of their    enterprise size companies and the benefits. Or is there even greater    opportunity for SMBs?

Eschenbach: Cloud provides business   benefit for all types of customers, regardless  of the vertical market   segment they're in or their size and scope.

If  you think about   cloud computing, the promise it brings customers is  the ability to get   access to infrastructure and data in a very  cost-efficient, rapid way   and only pay for what you use. It's a great  value proposition,   regardless of size and scope of your organization  and company.

With   that being said, some of the people moving to  cloud services first are   actually SMB organizations and companies,  because they don’t  necessarily  have the IT skill set that’s required  to keep up with the  business  demands. Therefore, if they can get this  service from someone  else, and  get a service level agreement (SLA) that’s relevant to their business, then they will move to a cloud model faster than the large enterprises will.

We're    seeing many SMB and mid-sized companies move to cloud-based models    and  offerings much faster than the large enterprise or the    multinationals.

We're  seeing many SMB and mid-sized   companies move to cloud-based models and  offerings much faster than the   large enterprise or the multinationals.

Gardner: Let's  slice it another way. How about vertical industry-specific   clouds?  We've started to see a little bit of this. NYSE is probably a   great  example. Do you expect to see more of that, where we've got    intermediaries between a general-purpose cloud approach and that more    specific to the business processes that are germane and relevant to    specific industries?

Eschenbach: We're really excited about the partnership we've formed with the NYSE Euronext and   the Capital Markets Community Platform that we had announced back in May.   The feedback from that announcement has been pretty positive.

In    fact, their CIO was on stage with me just the other day, and he not   only  spoke about how they're supporting their own infrastructure at   NYSE  Euronext based on vSphere,    but now with this Capital Markets cloud they are taking some of their    same services and offering them to this new community cloud market.

While    that is the first cloud that was really stood up, we do expect and    believe that there will be other vertical clouds that are going to be    stood up, whether it's in the federal government, where there’s already    been some announcements around that.

Trend will continue

I also think you can anticipate seeing some other financial services    clouds, as well as healthcare clouds, being stood up as well. This is a    trend that will continue.

One of the reasons we believe it will    continue is because people can stand up clouds and bring very  specific   business benefit that is very repeatable across the customers  who are   going to run on that cloud because they are in the same  vertical. If   they have the same compliance issues, or security, or  other regulatory   things that they have to adhere to, building a  community cloud for one   specific vertical is a lot easier than trying  to serve an entire market   with multiple, vertical clouds.

Gardner: I'm still   impressed by the amount of energy I'm seeing here. You'd  never know that   we have an economic stagnation problem around the  world. People here   are really jazzed, but I suppose we need to look at  this as a trying   time as well.

What are you encouraged by in  your meetings with   folks and discussions in terms of how they are able  to do more with less   essentially?

Eschenbach: This week I've had a great   opportunity to spend a lot of time with  customers and our ecosystem set   of partners. I can tell you that  everyone is excited for this major   tectonic shift we are seeing in the  industry, and these shifts only   happen every 10 or 20 years.

People    are trying to look at IT in a different way. They want IT to be   their   business partner so that they can differentiate themselves in  this    global economic environment.

People are starting to  say that   this whole cloud computing era is coming to life, and people  are trying   to look at IT in a different way. They want IT to be their  business   partner so that they can differentiate themselves in this  global   economic environment.

One thing that VMware and our  ecosystem set   of partners do is that we allow our customers to do more  with less,  and  that’s kind of a cliché statement. A lot of people  say, we will  bring  IT services and solutions to you and we will allow  you to do more  with  less. Well, quite honestly, if you look back over  the history of  VMware,  that has been a very consistent value  proposition that we bring  to our  customers.

Even potentially in  a down market or a market  where we  have a strong headwind, I believe  VMware and the rich set of  ecosystem  partners we have, we will always  move to the top of the pile,  when  people think about IT investments,  because we will indeed reduce  their  overall CAPEX and OPEX cost, at  the same time providing better IT   agility for the lines of business.

Strategic weapon

As    we move into 2012, our customers and business partners can continue  to   bet on VMware as being a very strategic weapon for them to   differentiate  themselves in this very competitive market.

The   thing I will end  on here is one thing that we are focused on is helping   our customers go  through this transformation towards cloud computing   in a very  programmatic way that allows them to protect their existing   assets in  the data center, and also protect their legacy applications,   but move to  a new world of cloud computing all at the same time. That   is what  excites me in the opportunity we collectively have with our   partners as  we look into 2012.

• VMworld Showcase: How ADP Dealer Services benefits from VMware View in its expanding use of desktop virtualization
• VMworld Case Study: City of Pittsburgh's IT success and the beneficial synergy between virtualized servers and desktops
  
• From VMworld, Cosmetics Giant Revlon Harnesses the Power of Private Cloud to Produce Impressive Savings and Cost Avoidance
• From VMworld, NYSE Euronext on Hybrid Cloud Vision and Strategy Behind the Capital Markets Community Platform Vertical Cloud
• VMware's vSphere 5 Hits the Streets
• VMware Launches a Developer Edition for Cloud Service
• Priming the Private Cloud Pump, HP Releases VirtualSystem for VMware at VMworld