Every business needs to be a digital business, but the real question is, what’s your strategy to win in an all-digital world?
These were the words of Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware and opening keynote speaker at vmworld 2016 in Barcelona today.
In his session ‘Connecting People, Apps & Data to Propel your Business Forward’ Gelsinger explored vmware’s industry perspective on digital business and the state of the cloud, as well as how the company is empowering its customers to innovate in this new era of multiple clouds.
He discussed how cloud technology has been the single most transformative phenomenon in technology over the past decade, ushering in an era of nearly unlimited choice for IT professionals, developers and business decision makers.
“Right now the buzz word is digital transformation,” he said. “This period of time we are in is very profound. Today what we are doing in digital transformation will be just as long-lasting as the industrial revolution; this is the foundation of digital business.”
However, the problem today is that the increasing number of public cloud choices have also generated a new set of problems, argued Gelsinger. Networking and security in the cloud era is teeming with new challenges and of course the potential for chaos – created from a lack of consistent security and compliance across clouds.
“Our traditional, manual approaches to IT simply will not scale to meet the demands [of the cloud],” he added.
The question to ask is: who is responsible for the operation and security of the cloud? The answer lies with IT; that’s the life of IT. We are in charge, we are responsible for a rapidly-changing and complex world.
This points to the ‘age-old’ conflict of freedom versus control, continued Gelsinger, where users are desperate to reap the benefits of the very latest in cloud serves but as a result concerns over the control of such services are rife.
“In the period of massive change like what we’re going through in the IT industry, this tension is heightened. Your users want freedom to choose any cloud services they want, and you [IT professionals] are responsible for control, for reputation, for security.”
In a hybrid world, he concluded, it’s about giving freedom and control, and delivering the tools that allow you to take advantage of both.