* VMware Chief Operating Officer Sanjay Poonen said the alliances it forged with cloud giants like Amazon, Microsoft and Google have transformed the company into an "indispensable bridge"
* VMware's virtualization technology has become a critical tool in the cloud as businesses set up networks on multiple platforms and in their own data centers.
* "If you look at the last two to three years, we're the only company where the six public cloud infrastructure leaders have all embraced VMware," Poonen told Business Insider. "Nobody else has that position of being the indispensable bridge from the private cloud to the public cloud."
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The earnings reports from several tech giants — Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google — are in and they underscore a key trend: the cloud is hot.
VMware chief operating officer Sanjay Poonen who has been keeping track of the reports says that he noted another common theme in these cloud giants' success.
"They've all embraced us," he told Business Insider last week. "Some percentage of those companies' revenue growth will come from VMware helping customers."
How did all the big cloud companies become VMware allies?
The Dell Technologies subsidiary blazed the trail for virtualization, a technology that enables businesses to access disparate computer systems as one network. Virtualization has become even more critical in the cloud because it allows businesses to set up networks on web-based platforms and lets them scale down — or even abandon — private data centers. A new trend called "hybrid cloud," where businesses use multiple cloud platforms as well as in-house data centers, has made VMware even more popular, since its software makes it possible to manage data and applications across platforms. As a result, all the major cloud players (including China-based Alibaba) have sought out an alliance with VMware.
"If you look at the last two to three years, we're the only company the six public cloud infrastructure leaders have all embraced," Poonen said. "Nobody else has that position of being the indispensable bridge from the private cloud to the public cloud. We view Amazon, [Microsoft] Azure, Google as our friends. We've worked really hard the last three years to build pristine partnerships with all of them."
Some of VMware's friendships have even raised eyebrows. The most prominent example is Oracle: The two companies had long been rivals, with Oracle refusing to support VMware's software for years, until it announced an unexpected new alliance late last year. VMware chief information officer Bask Iyer told the Business Insider at the time that he was "very pleasantly surprised" by Oracle's decision to form a partnership.
The COVID-19 crisis has led to a faster acceleration of the cloud, as businesses scramble to adapt to the sudden pivot to remote work. VMware is well-positioned to benefit thanks to the alliances it forged in the last few years, according to Poonen: "The notion of VMware being at the center of the cloud for the enterprise is only going to get more and more pronounced."
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