An Exclusive Interview with Carl Eschenbach, COO of VMware

Hey everyone, we're here with Carl Eschenbach, the COO of VMware. So Carl, first of all, thank you very much for having the time to talk to us.

Thank you for having me. I always enjoy getting on VMworld TV.

Thank you very much. I mean, it's a very busy time for you in VMworld, but also leading up to VMworld. You've done the keynote this morning. What goes into preparing the keynote for you?

Well, a lot goes into the preparation of any keynote, and I'm a planner, so I work on my keynotes a lot myself. I make sure I understand the material fully, and you know it takes probably two or three weeks of planning just to get to a keynote. Even if you're up there for 15 minutes or an hour, there's a lot of work. This one in particular was a lot of fun because I had the opportunity to interview two of our largest customers in Europe this morning on stage, being SAP and Vodafone. And I never really met those people in person, so there was a lot more preparation that was required, and we did a lot over the phone just to make sure we could get to know one another and I could come up with the right questions. that I felt would be relevant for the audience. So a lot of planning, but you can never plan enough when you're getting in front of 9,000 or 20,000 people. I just don't think you can plan enough, and over-preparation only makes you that much better on stage.

Exactly. Internally, I see a lot of the jokes. Are they prepared or are they really spontaneous as well?

Sometimes they're prepared, but other times, right, they're spontaneous. And the ones that are spontaneous typically come across much better than being prepared when you're trying to do something funny.

Exactly. Well, you always have a very Very good rapport with the audience. You mentioned, obviously, the keynote. There's announcements there. What are the major announcements for you, and what's the sort of importance into the marketplace of those announcements?

Yeah, I think we obviously, we use VMworld as a platform to showcase the technology and innovation engine at VMware, and that in fact it's alive and well each and every year. This year, both in San Francisco and again here, I think some of the key announcements that we're getting feedback that the customers are really excited about is EvoRail, and obviously you've probably been to the EvoZone in the Solution Showcase.

We have.

So people are really excited about the ability to get a software-defined data center up and running in 15 minutes, and the expansion of EvoRail through partners like HP has come across quite well. I think here in Europe this week, we hear a lot of people excited to hear us entering the market with our vCloud Air platform in Germany. So now servicing, you know, the UK area as well as now Central Europe out of Germany. I think that's very exciting. In our continued evolution of what we're doing in end-user computing, you know, over the last year we've made a couple key acquisitions with AirWatch and recently with Cloud Volumes. And we just see, you know, a lot of excitement around end-user computing. I would say in general, people just are impressed that each and every year VMware can come to VMworld, show our innovation, and we continue to make acquisitions that radically transforms the market. And in a very positive way, VMware continues to be a high highly disruptive company bringing innovation to market and changing the landscape of IT.

Yeah, change is the only constant at VMware.

It is the only constant at VMware.

Yeah, I absolutely know. I've been here for 10 years and we've gone through a lot of change together.

Yes, yes.

And what do you sort of think that the customers think of all those changes? They see obviously our roadmap evolving, if that's an English word. What's the feedback that you're getting from customers?

Positive, negative, and how does it sort of Yeah, well, VMware is in a very, very unique and blessed position in the fact that over the last decade, there's probably no technology company that's brought our customers, our industry, more value or more cost savings than VMware. So we're fortunate enough to have established a tremendous relationship with our customers. And as we bring out new innovative technologies and solutions, or we acquire technologies, because of the deep partnership we have with our customers, they're very open to engaging with us and actually buying additional technologies from us that we bring to market. You know, on the go-to-market side, right, for me it's all about a term called cross-sell, upsell. We're highly penetrated into our customers, they're highly virtualized on VMware. Now it's about us cross-selling and upselling adjacent technologies into those existing customers And again, as I said, because our customers like us, it gives us a really rich opportunity to help keep driving incremental revenue for VMware.

Yeah, I think one of the major announcements here is also the openness. Obviously, we've done the OpenStack announcement, and a lot of customers see change coming quicker and quicker in their environments as well.

Yeah, that's a great point.

How do you think that openness of VMware resonates with them? Why are we making a bet on OpenStack, for example?

Well, I think there's a couple things. First of all, from a customer perspective, the customer doesn't ever want to get locked into a specific vendor. Now VMware comes out and we go on the offensive. This is not a defensive move for VMware. We're basically coming out and we're going on the offensive and saying, customers, you're highly virtualized on VMware, and if you want to run OpenStack, which is nothing more than a framework for building clouds, run it on top of your existing framework called VMware and we'll support it. So, it's a very offensive move that we're taking, and the response from the customers has been, wow, thank you. We don't think you're trying to lock us in further to VMware. You're opening up your architecture to support not just things like OpenStack, but our exciting announcements that we made around containers, and the fact we're partnering with someone like Docker, Google, and Pivotal and Cloud Foundry. We are becoming an open enterprise software company, but someone who can still clearly differentiate ourselves with more of our, you know, VMware stack as opposed to just pure open source solutions.

Yeah, I think it's a very unique position in the market that resonates well. What's the one thing that you want people to take away from VMworld if they're here or if they're following all the news at home? What's the one key thing that you think is important for people following all the news?

You know, for me, each and every year I come to VMworld, and when I leave here, I'm full with— filled with energy and enthusiasm. It's like I got a shot of adrenaline every time I leave VMworld, and it basically helps you get through the next year. My guidance for people is if you've never experienced VMworld or you've never seen the energy, the enthusiasm, and just the overall attitude of our customers, Come to VMworld, experience it, and you'll be good for another year, and then come back again to VMworld again.

I can absolutely relate to that. So thank you very much.

Thank you very much for having me.

Appreciate it.