VMware shares trends for CIOs in 2018

Davie shares the VMware vision, which covers support for any device, application, and cloud. 

CIOs are moving from operational responsibilities to making IT strategic for the business as companies transform digitally. Software is key to achieving digital transformation benefits like brand differentiation and enhancing the customer experience, says Bruce Davie, VP & CTO, VMware Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), noting that it is a “pretty exciting time to be a CIO”.

CIOs can for example generate revenue by selling solutions developed "in-house for in-house use" to others, he said on the sidelines of VMware's CIO Forum in Singapore. "The CIO used to be responsible for doing a well-defined set of tasks and controlling costs. You can (now) think of the CIO as generating revenue by bringing new opportunities for the business," he said.

By 2020, over 80% of the G500 - the top 500 companies globally - will be digital service suppliers through specialised clouds, he shared. Things have changed greatly since 2012, when talking about the cloud to CIOs was about cost control and consolidation, Davie said. "That was a 'we can save you money' discussion," he said. "Now it's about making the entire business more agile."

Today's cloud technology supports hybrid clouds and the automatic provisioning of workloads to different clouds, different technology platforms, and different providers. One government organisation can request new workloads to come online within minutes instead of in six to eight weeks, Davie said.

A VMware public sector customer used hybrid cloud computing and DevOps to improve its agility and develop modern services. 

There has also been a shift towards mobility in the enterprise. In 2012 the concerns were about 'how do I let my employees bring their mobile devices to work' and secure access. "Today the focus is on 'how do I actually change the business through the use of mobile technology'", Davie said.

A healthcare customer in Australia is using a VMware mobility solution to deliver patient data to doctors as they roam on mobile devices, Davie said. "It is about patients and end-users getting more access to data," he noted.

ANZ Bank is also using mobility and digital workspaces to rethink the banking experience. VMware helps ANZ Bank manage more than 18,000 devices across 34 countries using VMware digital workspace solutions. This enables ANZ’s bankers to meet customers on the Internet, via smartphones, at their homes and businesses or at digital-enabled spaces within a bank building.

Then there is the shift on security. In 2012 CIOs did not neccessarily thnik it was their job to think about security, Davie explained. "Now security is so front-and-centre that it's a C-level issue," he said. "As we change the way networking is done through software defined networking (SDN) and network virtualisation security gets better. It's no longer the case that you get to choose between security and agility. You actually get both."

VMware customer Airtel, which also uses VMware’s vRealize Suite, had initially embraced VMware's NSX network virtualisation and security platform as they needed the agility. "As they deployed network virtualisation, they realised they could also improve security. This is changing the way Airtel interacts with customers as they get apps out faster and are more competitive against their peers," Davie said.

In May 2017, VMware acquired Wavefront, a US company which offers a real-time metrics monitoring and streaming analytics platform for the cloud. "We can look at the operational metrics of a data centre and get insights of how a business is running," Davie said.

The content management platform Box is a Wavefront reference customer. The Wavefront solution is Box's go-to tool for development and operations engineers to understand the health of the company’s infrastructure and services. Wavefront technology manages application performance, troubleshooting, monitoring production.

"Wavefront collects millions of metrics at a high rate from infrastructure and apps," Davie said. "Data and analytics can impact a business directly." Davie also touched on the focus to the network edge. "We see with the Internet of Things (IoT) that computing is starting to swing back to the edge," he said, giving the example of a self-driving car which has to make instant decisions about object avoidance on the road. "We want that to be done locally," he pointed out.

Specialised telecommunications infrastructure is ripe for upgrading as well, especially as there is already a need to revamp things with the advent of 5G technology. "Telcos have the opportunity to adopt new equipment for 5G. That's the insertion point for network virtualisation," he said.

"Most of their infrastructure isn't virtualised," Davie elaborated. He estimated that only 10% of any given telco's network uses virtualisation.

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Read the TechTrade Asia blog posts about the Singtel and VMware partnership to accelerate digital transformation in Asia Pacific, and the VMware CIO Forum focus on digital transformation