Pat Gelsinger: Dell a fan of VMware-AWS partnership

At AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Amazon Web Services announced a new service allowing customers to consume AWS's own datacentre hardware on-premises.

AWS Outposts is available as two options, with the first being the VMware Cloud on AWS, which further extends its VMware partnership, and the second being AWS native.

AWS CEO Andy Jassy and VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger faced media questioning in a post-keynote press event, with the latter asked whether or not Outposts was eating into VMware's on-premise business.

"I want customers to use as much VMware as possible," he said. "So we'll of course be favouring the full VMware cloud option ... but we fully recognise customers want choice."

When asked by ZDNet what further investment in a VMware-AWS partnership will mean for the broader Dell Technologies company, Gelsinger said Michael Dell is supportive.

"Michael Dell has been a fan of our partnership; he's absolutely supportive of it from day one as chairman of the board," Gelsinger told ZDNet.

"I take his input and listen when he has things to say ... he's fully supportive of the partnership."

"Obviously in this domain this is different hardware which does have some competitive dynamics with Dell, but again, [Michael Dell] fully represents and believes if it's in VMware's best interests, it's in Dell Technologies best interests and fully supports that offer," Gelsinger continued.

SEE: AWS re:Invent 2018: A guide for tech and business pros (free PDF) TechRepublic

The CEOs, however, refused to address if an AWS-Dell EMC partnership is the progression from this, or if it is a sign of more on-premise versions of historically cloud-based services for AWS.

"We have announced some services like our Dimension service that we will be implementing with Dell in this space as well, and you can expect that we're going to do innovations with them as well as other hardware partners -- that's part of the VMware proposition -- but we think Outposts is going to be highly successful," Gelsinger told ZDNet.

"If you need any evidence of that, just spend a couple of minutes walking around [re:Invent] -- see the energy and the excitement from customers about what Amazon is doing, and what we're doing together."

Speaking earlier, Jassy hinted towards further partnerships with hardware manufacturers, either as an extension of Outposts or as separate offerings.

"We use a lot of different hardware ... we've built it so we can interchange whatever we want," Jassy said.

"We're always open to whatever hardware hardware providers want to provide us ... it's possible that other hardware providers will be in Outposts."

AWS and VMware announced its partnership two years ago, and the companies unveiled VMware Cloud on AWS earlier this year.

Disclosure: Asha Barbaschow travelled to AWS re:Invent as a guest of AWS

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