VMware CEO outlines five imperatives for digital business

Asymmetry in business

Gelsinger began by saying this is the best time in history to be an upstart company challenging the status quo. In today’s asymmetrical business world, upstarts have nothing to lose as they aggressively embrace new business models that change the rules of the game. Large, established businesses must recognise that the benefits of incumbency are declining. The pressure is on to innovate like a start-up and deliver like an enterprise. As Gelsinger described it, “Elephants must learn to dance.”

 

The professional era of cloud

Gelsinger believes we must now move to a more connected and compatible “professional era of cloud”. He stated the need for a unified hybrid cloud. “It’s not about the big beating the small, it’s the fast beating the slow. So the most strategic way forward in this space is creating hybrid applications.”

 

The security challenge

Gelsinger believes businesses have been spending too much money on products that don’t solve security challenges and suggested that the cost of security breaches had increased more than the cost of security spend.

“Some say security should be built in and not bolted on – it’s nonsense. We didn’t have a place to bolt it in. We were just patching it on. We need to put an end to that thinking and now architect in security. It lets us be twice as secure for half the cost.”

He believes the virtualisation layer is changing the nature of cyber-security forever. For the first time, virtualisation provides a critical translation layer between the IT infrastructure sitting below and the apps and data that reside above. Leveraging virtualisation as a foundational architecture, Gelsinger proclaimed that a renaissance in security had begun, and he urged IT leaders to seize the moment.

 

Proactive technology

Gelsinger said we were on the cusp of a new “proactive” model of technology, where software is smart enough to act on our behalf, handling everything from mundane everyday tasks to life-saving medical procedures executed by microscopic “milli-robots” travelling through a person’s bloodstream. He said this proactive future would be built on intelligent automation, giving us the ability to predict (almost) anything.

 

Tech-driven change reshapes S&P 500

Gelsinger concluded by sharing a perspective on the impact all of this tech-driven change would have on businesses around the world. He cited data projecting that within the next decade, 40 per cent of the S&P 500 would go out of existence. In other words, four out of 10 of today’s industry-leading businesses will be merged, changed, or extinct by 2025. He predicted that half of the firms on today’s Tech 100 list would be gone within 10 years.

His final imperative focused on the need for businesses large and small to break out in order to stay relevant. He declared that inaction was the greatest risk today.

He closed his keynote speech with a call to action for the 23,000 people in the audience at Vmworld: “You must break out to stay relevant in this future. Rattle the cage, be the entrepreneur and innovator for your business. This is your time to lead the change.”