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Shaping the Future of Innovation with Kit Colbert, SVP and CTO at VMware
In this episode Kit talks about how his role as CTO at VMware isn’t typical compared to his peers, and how he’s both looking out for near term deliverables and ensuring the company has a viable future.
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Kit Colbert joined VMware in September 2003 (following an internship in 2002) and currently serves as senior vice president and chief technology officer. He is responsible for ensuring VMware’s long term technology leadership through research and innovation programs, with the primary goal of positively impacting and shaping the future of VMware, its ecosystem, and its customers. As CTO, Colbert’s will shape the technical vision for the company, and the transformation to a cloud and subscription-centric R&D organization. His oversight includes advancing research and development efforts, overseeing the VMware Engineering Services team, the Design/UX team and the company’s ESG commitments.
Prior to September 2021, Colbert served in multiple roles, including VMware’s Cloud CTO, General Manager of VMware’s Cloud-Native Apps business, CTO for VMware’s End-User Computing Business, and as the lead architect for the VMware vRealize Operations Suite. Colbert joined VMware as the technical lead behind the creation, development and delivery of the vMotion and Storage vMotion features in VMware vSphere.
Colbert is a recognized thought-leader on application modernization and multi-cloud trends. He speaks regularly at industry conferences and serves as the multi-cloud voice for the VMware Office of the CTO blog. Colbert holds a bachelor’s of science in computer science from Brown University.
In this episode Matt Trifiro interviews Kit Colbert, SVP and CTO at VMware. Kit started at VMware right out of college as an intern in 2003. He is responsible for ensuring VMware’s long term technology leadership through research and innovation programs, with the primary goal of positively impacting and shaping the future of VMware, its ecosystem, and its customers.
Kit talks about how his role as CTO at VMware isn’t typical compared to his peers, and how he’s both looking out for near term deliverables and ensuring the company has a viable future. He provides insight on what he has learned and how the company has adapted and progressed over the years, discussing everything from the future of connectivity and bandwidth to blockchain and the open grid alliance.
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Key Quotes:
“We’re trying to balance sort of two aspects. Number one, sort of our near term deliverables to help engineering accelerate and deliver these new products in new ways for us. And number two, also chartered with ensuring that we’ve got a viable future. And so we’re looking at the different sorts of innovation, research, and things that are going to be paying the bills in maybe five to seven years.”
“It’s basically a question of how do we as an industry build, deliver, and operate software. This is the challenge that we’ve been struggling with for the last few decades. And there’s the sort of traditional model, which has been that you build it, then you test it, and then you ship it out to customers and they stand it up. I think the big shift that we’re seeing is that people would prefer to get things as a service.”
“People are now looking for everywhere. And, I think the opportunity goes back a lot to the programming model. How can we make this as simple as possible for developers? Because I think the easier that you can make it, that’s where you’re going to win. People love simplicity, and that’s one of the beauty of cloud; there’s a tremendous amount of complexity, but that complexity is largely hidden most of the time.”
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Timestamps:
(02:00) Getting Started in Technology
(05:10) Working at VMware
(07:10) What does the CTO of VMware do?
(07:40) What an Organization Values
(08:40) Empowering Others
(10:20) Ensuring a Viable Future
(11:40) Existential Trends, Staying Ahead, and History of VMware
(13:10) VMware Product Focus and Security Considerations
(14:20) Focus of the office of CTO
(15:30) Blockchain
(17:50) Trends Driving Visualization and Multi-Cloud
(23:21) Edge Opportunities
(25:00) Open Grid Alliance
(28:30) Modern Application Design
(29:50) AI/ML Use Cases
(31:39) VSan and Automation
(35:05) Future of 6G and Networking
(38:50) Architecture Opportunities and Integration
(40:30) IoT and Considerations for Computing and Security
(42:15) Edge and Multi-Cloud
(45:00) Data Centers and Storage Locations
(47:50) Email Signatures
(54:10) Notion of Inclusion
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Sponsor:
Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting DellTechnologies.com/SimplifyYourEdge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.
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Links:
What Message Does Your Email Signature Send? – Article by Kit Colbert
