2 Eras

Gilman said VMware catapulted into the mainstream during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. He said it went from a tier two platform to a widely heralded provider as cloud applications grew in popularity.

“That was the crossing of the chasm from VMware being relatively nascent to something that actually became mission-critical. That was really where cloud first started to prove its worth, but primarily on the application side,” Gilman told Channel Futures.

Gilman said the most recent economic event – namely the COVID-19 pandemic – ushered in an entirely new cloud revolution. This one, he said, focuses more on how to enable hybrid work.

“It’s all around bringing together capabilities that drive an integrated experience, because IT has been disaggregated. You’re not just managing the office environment. You’re managing everyone’s homes. You’re managing the edge and the core. Your IT staff have never been more stretched out. Same thing with your security footprint, and your security posture is now wide,” Gilman said.

“Whether you’re coming back to the office or trying to make a home worker really productive, what we saw over the past couple of years was a kind of triage, where IT had to figure out how to kind of make everyone productive wherever they were working,” added Gilman. “So they did a lot of a lot of point tools. In 2022, this workstyle is really sticking, and everyone’s looking to design better, more engaging experiences that are highly dynamic.”