Michael Dell 'nudged forward' VMware-AWS pact

Michael Dell "nudged forward" the cloud partnership between VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger.

The cloud giants announced the deal last week, which will see AWS' public cloud host VMWare's private cloud offering.

Speaking in Barcelona at VMWorld Europe 2016, Gelsinger (pictured) said: "Michael was very supportive and certainly nudged forward the relationship because he's very positive that it's the right thing for VMware and VMware customers."

The partnership with AWS, which is set to launch mid-2017, is VMware's second major cloud collaboration, following a deal with IBM announced earlier this year aimed at helping move existing VMware workloads to the cloud.

VMware's relationships with other vendors were a talking point at last year's VMworld, which came immediately after the announcement of Dell's EMC acquisition.

Gelsinger, whose own future was being questioned earlier this year, added that Michael Dell has been supportive of VMware partnering with vendors who are considered competitors of Dell.

"IBM largely competes with Dell and yet Michael [Dell] was fully supportive of us moving forward with the IBM partnership," he said.

"Amazon does nothing with Dell and yet we're moving forward in a meaningful way with Amazon.

"We actually have a good performance from our OEM relationships and obviously in this period of time, given the increased depth of the Dell partnerships, other OEMs are looking at VMware and hearing what Michael and Pat say about the committed ecosystem, but they're also expecting to see it in our actions as well."

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• VMware
• Cloud Computing
• Amazon Web Services
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