Dell Spins Off VMware: What Does That Mean for You?

The strategic relationship remains, while bringing greater flexibility and opportunity for compelling new solutions.

VMware and Dell Technologies recently announced that the two companies have reached an agreement regarding the spin-off of VMware. While the reasons for the spin-off are primarily related to ownership structure and financial considerations, the end result is that the two companies will be going their separate ways (so to speak).

With the transaction expected to close during the fourth quarter of calendar year 2021, Michael Dell will remain Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dell Technologies, as well as Chairman of the Board at VMware, so we can expect the companies will continue to share some common DNA. Dell Technologies and VMware have also finalized a commercial agreement that preserves and enhances their strategic partnership.

Dell’s Spin-Off of VMware Will Give Customers Greater Flexibility

In 2016, Dell acquired EMC and sought to integrate EMC and VMware technologies into its offerings to basically become a one-stop shop for digital infrastructure and all things needed to drive digital transformation. Fast forward to 2021, and each company has seen momentous success together and will now have the latitude to pursue opportunities that reach beyond one another’s business and organizational ties.

What does this mean for EchoStor customers with existing VMware and Dell investments? And how will it impact your technology choices moving forward?

The reality is, VMware has been mostly operating independently of Dell at the sales level since the 2016 acquisition. EchoStor continues to maintain strong relationships with both VMware and Dell, and we don’t expect that to change.

What we do anticipate once the spin-off is complete is increased flexibility when designing VMware solutions for customers. While VMware has always been agnostic at the hypervisor level, during the “Dell days,” VMware and Dell engineering worked very closely together to create synergies between technologies with purpose-built solutions. VxRail and the Dell Technologies Cloud are good examples of the tight collaboration between both Dell and VMware and their ability to co-engineer best-in-class solutions to solve customer challenges.

EchoStor continues to maintain strong relationships with both VMware and Dell, and we don’t expect that to change.

Moving forward, however, VMware will gain tremendous flexibility to forge stronger relationships with other partners, such as Cisco, for example, with whom EchoStor has maintained a strong partnership for many years. Fortunately, because both VMware and Dell are committed to maintaining their strategic partnership, customers with existing investments in their joint solutions or services shouldn’t experience any disruption in product or service delivery and support. The fact that Michael Dell will continue as Chairman of the Board at VMware should give existing customers confidence that the five areas the companies jointly address in their go-to-market strategies—multi-cloud, security, application modernization, virtual cloud network, and digital workspace—will remain intact.

But with the flexibility VMware now has, customers should look forward to better integration with non-Dell solutions, perhaps increased integration between VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager and UCS Manager, for example, as well as some of the other server platforms that customers are using to improve manageability. EchoStor sees this as an opportunity for our team to build new and compelling solutions that solve our customers’ business needs.

A Consistent Vision Is Good News for Customers

The appointment of Rangarajan Raghuram as Chief Executive Officer heralds in new leadership for VMware, but at the end of the day, VMware will continue to drive forward its vision of a ubiquitous software and SaaS platform across all clouds and hardware infrastructure that helps accelerate customers’ digital transformation. The company will have greater freedom to execute this strategy in a variety of ways through a variety of technologies, while still leveraging the ability to collaborate and co-engineer solutions with Dell Technologies.

That’s good news for customers—and great news for organizations looking for greater flexibility in their choice of technologies and solutions that integrate with VMware.

Fortunately, because both VMware and Dell are committed to maintaining their strategic partnership, customers with existing investments in their joint solutions or services shouldn’t experience any disruption in product or service delivery and support.

Our experienced team of Dell and VMware engineers can help you figure out what this changed relationship means for your IT strategy.