Will becoming an independent company from Dell Technologies open new doors for VMware?

The partnership with Dell is deep and strong. Regardless of the corporate ownership structure, we have had extraordinary technical collaboration and extraordinary go-to-market collaboration with Dell. What we have done now with the impending spin-off is, we have quantified this into a strategic business agreement and we’ll execute against that.

At the same time, the fact that we are an independent company enables other [vendor] partners who previously would have not been so keen to engage deeply on a deep strategic partnership with us, to now do so. I’ve already had, along with my team, engagements with some of these partners. What you should look for in the coming weeks, months and years, is that our partnership with the broader ecosystem is as deep and as strong as it is with Dell today.

By the way, there’s more opportunity for [VMware’s] core channel partner community.

How so?

The more VMware is able to partner [with other vendors] to bring new, joint solutions – those are things that we obviously will take to our partner community into the customer base.