Raghu Raghuram On Tanzu Competition, Dell And 2022 Strategy

VMware Tanzu is besting Red Hat’s OpenShift in head-to-head competition via its broader Kubernetes portfolio, interoperability capability and “deeper” integration with vSphere, said VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram.

“Tanzu stacks up very well against [Red Hat OpenShift],” said Raghuram in an interview with CRN. “We are winning a lot of accounts head-to-head against them.”

VMware’s CEO is bullish about his company’s future this year as it will mark the first full year as an independent entity following its recent spin-off from Dell Technologies. Raghuram has big plans in store for forming new strategic vendor partnerships, betting on channel partners and making VMware the leading multi-cloud software provider.

In an interview with CRN, Raghuram talks about VMware Tanzu Kubernetes’ advantage not only over IBM Red Hat, but AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Anthos as well. “We are truly multi-cloud. Products like Anthos are primarily a single cloud with some extensions, if needed, to other places. It is not their primary business,” said Raghuram.

Additionally, he explains why channel partners are more critical than ever to customers. “Channel partners have a tremendous opportunity because they can provide three things that customers are looking for: time, talent and trust,” Raghuram said.