Infrastructure has entered the developer realm, and VMware knows it

VMware Inc. is celebrating impressive earnings and a committed customer base. But cloud has created a developer operations world where developers are taking the driver’s seat. Behind the excitement of VMworld 2019, VMware is shackled by a reputation for being infrastructure-based. And operations attendees still dominate the event. Can throwing money at the problem bring the developers flocking? “Pat [Gelsinger, chief executive officer of VMware] tallied up $5 billion in purchases last week to get out of this motion of being stuck in the IT Infrastructure realm,” said Keith Townsend (pictured, left), principal at The CTO Advisor, referring to VMware’s announcement of the reacquisition of Pivotal Software Inc, a company that was spun off in 2012 after the Dell EMC merger. “Will it pay off?” he asked. To the outside, what [VMware] have produced in the past, that’s all operations. [But] inside the VMware, it’s purely software-driven,” said cloud influencer Sarbjeet Johal (right). “So I think they can make that switch because of the culture, and then with the Pivotal acquisition I think it will make it much easier.